Strike Will Continue Into Next Week, But B.N.T.U. Up for Negotiations

Luke Palacio

There will be at least a sixth day of industrial action organized by the Belize National Teachers’ Union on Tuesday because Monday is a holiday. That is the news coming out of a day-long meeting of the Union’s Council of Management at their Belize City headquarters this afternoon. The Council convened following membership meetings in each of the ten branches held after Thursday’s mass demonstrations and rallies countrywide. But while most schools will again be closed next week, there may be an end in sight. According to Teachers’ Union president Luke Palacio, they are asking Prime Minister Dean Barrow to make formal the earlier call by him and by Cabinet to return to the negotiating table.

Luke Palacio, National President, B.N.T.U.

“Despite the propaganda that has been spread, that the Prime Minister has invited us to a meeting, to the negotiations table, that there has been no such formal request. Not in writing, not via telephone call. We heard that, like all other Belizeans did, when he had his video launched some two Sundays ago. We take this opportunity this evening, to call on the Prime Minister to set a date, a time and a venue for a meeting, so that that meeting can be held, because like we’ve said before and we continuously say, the doors remain open. However, until that meeting is convened, and the B.N.T.U. obtains a level of satisfaction from the responses or the outcomes of such a meeting, our members will remain on strike. We take it one day at a time my brother. This is fluid; on Tuesday this is what we said we will do and by the end of Tuesday, we will say to our membership what we are going to do on Wednesday. We are saying that there has been no formal request—neither in writing nor by telephone. The only place we’ve heard that the Prime Minister is asking the unions to go back to the negotiating table is in his video presentation. So we are saying to him now, either make that formal call or in writing, but we are making a request that a meeting be held with the Prime Minister either on Tuesday or Wednesday. He is going to suggest the venue, the time and which of those two days, he will have that meeting held.”