N.T.U.C.B. says why it did not vote for investment in Telemedia

As we told you, the Belize Social Security Board’s decision is already under fire. The vote was taken on Tuesday night because on Friday of last week trade union representatives Dylan Reneau and Elena Smith absented themselves from a scheduled meeting which would have considered the vote. When it didn’t happen, the S.S.B. chairman, Lois Young, accused the union reps of sabotage and was most irate that that she had been left standing with a chocolate cake in honor Reneau, the President of the National Trade Union Congress. Today he told News Five that they voted against the investment because their concerns which were highlighted in a twelve point memo were not addressed.

Dylan Reneau, President, N.T.U.C.B.

dylan reneau

“The composition of the Social Security Board is that the ex-officio member, who is the CEO, the government has five directors and the Trade Union Congress two, the Chamber of Commerce em, the Chamber of Commerce has one and the B.B.B. [uhm] Belize Business Bureau has one representative.  [Uhm] the vote was taken and it was passed because there are five directors for the government and four for the social partners.

Isani Cayetano

The Trade Union Congress voted against it because [uhm] there are several potential risks and we think that the risks are very, very grave.  We have the political risk [uhm] election is coming up [and] we don’t know how that election will go. You have the risk of the contingent liability, the forty-five million dollars.  [Uhm] you have the litigation risk that are still there and I consider the Sunshine Holding loan another risk because in this whole process that could be lost and that is fourteen point one million dollars on the financials of SSB right now that may well be, we may never collect because it’s an unsecured loan that was given.  So that is something that is important for us to resolve. As social partners we want these things to be addressed and the government or the board has, though the decision was taken by the government, the directors made this decision that we will pursue those issues that were raised at the board yesterday.”