From Belize City, we take you now to Belmopan where a similar motorcade took place around Ring Road. Due to COVID restrictions, the Belmopan teachers were only allowed 40 vehicles, and could not traverse the rest of the city.
But they still came out in as many numbers as they could in support of the cause. The president of the Belmopan Branch said that both primary and high school teachers were out in their green shirts. She explained the concerns these teachers had and added that a 10% pay cut would have a major impact - especially for a teacher like her who spends a grand on redecorating her classroom every school year.
Corlan Galvez, President, BNTU Belmopan Branch
"We got a limit of 40 vehicles so we can't go over 40 vehicles and what the teachers are doing, they are carpooling so we have majority of the teachers coming out. The teachers are from primary and high school in the Belmopan area."
"The thing is at the end of the day as teachers people always say as teachers we have to buy pencil we have to buy this that for our students, we are already used to that, like for me, every summer I spend $1000 on my classroom because I like redecorate and I have to paint and things like that so I spend that amount of money and a lot of t4eachers do the same thing, a lot of teachers live hand to mouth, at 10% from some of their pay, that would be the 10% they are taking home because of mortgages and other loans and things like that. We as teachers feel like there are a lot of other ways that the government can find to cost savings. As BNTU, we gave them a lot of ways to do cost saving and they ignored that, if they don't want to cut their allowances that they do not need at the moment then why come to our small piece of pay and that is why as teachers we are unhappy with this."
"We Sacrificed already one year of increment without any hesitation, if you calculate three years pay cut and four years increment freeze then you have to look at what will happen when it comes to our pension also because it would also affect our pension. They told us if we do the salary cut and the increment freeze, there's no compensation so nothing to give us back or whatever. So that is why we are here today."
That was courtesy PLUS TV.
