Leroy Green’s Pension in Jeopardy over Missing Teaching Records

Leroy Green

He is known countrywide for his work in the creative arts, specifically the National Festival of Arts. Most recently and leading up to his retirement last November, Leroy Green had been working with the Ministry of Education to implement a creative arts curriculum into the formal education system.  But tonight, the career teacher of thirty-four years is up in arms because it’s been six months since he’s retired and now the ministry is saying that the over three decades of records showing that he was a teacher cannot be found. It is no joking matter for Green, who says that he has made his contributions and should be given his benefits.

Leroy Green, Retired Teacher

“I’d like the general public to know that this has nothing to do with politics because I know here in Belize, everything people like to take personal or political. So I am letting the public know that what I am doing here has nothing to do with any politics; it is entirely professional. Last year the seventh of January 2016, I subjected my first notice of retirement from the teaching profession. The actual retirement took effect the twenty-ninth of November, 2016. I have heard horror stories about retirement so to facilitate the process, I went myself to the Income Tax Department got a document saying that I owed the government no income tax; went to Social Security and got the entire printout of my month by month, year by year, contributions and submitted it along with the letter of retirement. The retirement took effect on the twenty-ninth of November, 2016. Fortunately I got a nine-month contract with the government to continue in the post of Curriculum Officer/National Coordinator Expressive Arts. This particular contract ends August thirty-first this year. Two weeks ago, six months after I retired, when I should already be receiving pension, I got a call from the Ministry of Education saying that they cannot find any records of me as a teacher from 1973 until the year 2017., which is thirty-four years out of my forty-four year career as a teacher. You can imagine how I felt when I heard that. On top of it, I was told that I should be the one to go to the particular institutions to go and try to dig up those records.”