N.T.U.C.B. Elects New President; Public Service Regulations to be Revised
Henry Charles Usher
The National Trade Union Congress of Belize has elected a new executive. President Luis Luke Martinez will now lead the N.T.U.C.B. New executive members for the umbrella organization were chosen over the weekend during a virtual event for its fifty-fourth annual general meeting. Meanwhile, the Public Service Union, which falls under the N.T.U.C.B., will be working closely with the Minister of Public Service to revise existing regulations that govern public officers. According to Minister Henry Charles Usher, those regulations include the hiring, transfers and promotions and terminations of government employees.
Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Public Service
“There are a lot of areas within the Public Service Regulations that need a little tightening up, a little improvement and we’ll be looking at all of those. The union has presented a lot of updates that they would like to see happening in the regulations, so we will be working very closely with them in terms of how we move forward with the changes having to be made in the regulations. But the regulations cover a number of issues, it covers hiring, transfers, promotions, terminations, disciplinary measures if there needs to be disciplinary measures. So there’s a lot going on in those regulations. Training. I am happy to say that we just had a graduation class for secretaries, the first one in a number of years. When they approached me back in November and said, “You know we would like to do it but we would have to do it virtually.” I said yes, let’s get it done. So we are having that graduation ceremony, I believe on February eleventh it will be made public. But this is the type of work that needs to be done at the public service, needs to be done for public officers so that they can have that independence, they can have that confidence of know that they are coming to their job and they know that there’s a promotion mechanism in place where people don’t just come in and jump or leapfrog them for whatever reason.”
Luke Martinez succeeds Marvin Mora as the N.T.U.C.B.’s President. His deputy is Miguel Aguilar.
