G.O.B. Stretching the Truth to Mess with Teachers

Luke Palacio

In responding to comments made by Faber on Monday, Palacio says that the Minister of Education is spinning the truth by accusing the union of disrupting the ministry’s attempts to complete the scheduled make up time for teachers.

Luke Palacio, President, Belize National Teachers Union

“The other misleading thing that the minister has attempted to do is to blame the union for sabotaging the ministry’s efforts at the makeup of time for the strike.  We had said from the beginning that we were prepared to make up the time.  We went to court and on the twenty-seventh of January, the court, based on the mediation, I mean we went to mediation and based on that mediation, the agreement was simple.  And it was the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Education officials which they call their management team or their senior management team, they were the ones who insisted that they did not want us to make up the time half an hour in the morning and an extra half an hour in the evening.  They wanted six full days and they wanted those six full days made up out of the vacation period.  So how can you now come and say or try and mislead this nation to believe that it was the union that decided on those six days.  It was the mediation process that produced that and if you go back into the archives of the media you will find that at the time of the Child Stimulation Month, the day when the Child Stimulation Month began, the minister was asked the question and he himself said it, we do not want the time off, I mean the makeup time to be in the form of half hour extra in the morning and half hour extra in the afternoon.  We want six full days.  So now you come and use all some kind of math to explain that you need to pay these people for all these days because the union sabotaged.”