The Leadership Intervention Unit pays scores of salaries to gang affiliated persons on a weekly basis. For years, that was done with cheques issued by the city council - which is problematic because cashing these checks force the gang members to go to businesses in rival neighborhoods to get their money which can be dangerous. Elwin "Bobo" Lewis was killed while doing this 5 months ago.
But now, the LIU has made changes to the payment system, The LIU and the City Council have partnered with Digiwallet to provide an easier solution for paying workers. But like any transition over to online banking, the process has been met with a few complications.
The LIU chairlady spoke with us today about the change and growing pains. Jomarie Lanza reports.
Last week Friday marked the beginning of a new payment system for LIU workers. Instead of lining up to receive their checks, all 273 workers transitioned onto DigiWallet's online banking system. And though the new process has been met with a few criticisms and concerns, LIU Chairlady Dominique Noralez says that it's a step up from the way they used to do things.
Dominique Noralez, Chairlady, LIU
"So before we used to pay people via cheques, so physical checks where our partners at the city council had to make and the persons authorized signed it so that was like three people. Sometimes and obviously the city council has its own responsibility so they have been very kind to us is how i usually describe it to do that service for us we just recently some weeks ago signed our new MOU and so they've been very kind to us and it takes up a lot to do nearly 300 checks it takes up a lot of their time so since I got this position since I was appointed to this position I recognized it was not the most efficient only because one it is a huge administrative weight on the city council and two it has hundreds of people tens of people let me say gathering at one spot to pick up checks on a pay day and as human nature has it people will once they find a place they are comfortable with that they know they will get their money they will all crowd up there. Huge security risk not only for our clients but also for the police officers that are detached from the Belize police department and to the LIU so that's how the payment system used to work before."
Upon taking office last year in August, Noralez says the payment system was one of the first things she wanted to improve, prior to the murder of an LIU worker Elwin "Bobo" Lewis who was killed while cashing in his check back in May.
Dominique Noralez, Chairlady, LIU
"All these people were aware that this was a change I had been wanting to make. It just finally came to fruition. So no it was not precipitated by what was very unfortunate, it's something that lives in my mind a lot because I think if we were just a bit quicker with this process things could have possibly been different right but no it was not started by that it had started well before his passing."
"We are trying to ensure that people are included socially and so even though they get a debit card of some sort it's the closest thing I could describe it as a debit card they can go into the agents get all their cash or leave some cash on the card they can integrate it with their digi wallet app by their phone numbers so there are a lot of options that they have it's not that we are pigeonholing people in fact we are trying to spread out people and give them more options as opposed to only going to Kim behind Gwen Liz you can go to several agents across Belize City that may be safer for you that is closer to your home that is easy to access so I think we are giving people a bit more options than simply going to one shop."
LIU does not have a finance office and so they rely on their collaboration with City council to assist them in filling the financial management gap in paying workers. Though the transition over to DigiWallet has had a few hiccups, Noralez is confident that this new system does make things much easier:
Dominique Noralez, Chairlady, LIU
"Certainly a learning curve, the Friday was the first payday we did via Digiwallet and so today is Monday so all the issues that people would have had which isn't very many but it was a minority of persons who had issues but there are issues that need to be addressed because they are affecting people and their ability to get their income right. So it was definitely a learning curve the things that we would have prepared for so fixing it some for the hours or the next business day I think is quite a good track record to try and fix these things, in fact we even had some of the cards that had issues which is probably like five or seven of them coming in this afternoon from our partners so certainly a learning curve but I think with progress comes problems and I think one of the things that we have to it's not problems that are causing any weight or issues that we can particularly handle. I think before one of the things that happened because of the check system is that we couldn't pay people on the actual payday because the process was so tedious that checks were not finished being signed because people have their own schedule right. Now we moved from a week long process to like a two hours process that isn't over beating on any party. In fact on Friday people got paid at 8:00Am as opposed to waiting 4:30-5:30 to pick up a check when there's a long line of people waiting to sign and verify and all that stuff. So, learning curve but I think a necessary step forward."
