The Belize National Teachers’ Union held its biennial officers’ seminar on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week and came out with some smoking resolutions. One of the resolutions calls out the Chief Justice and the Prime Minister. It calls on the CJ to lift the order restraining the publication of the Merlene Bailey-Martinez DFC report and on the Prime Minister to publish those reports. Another resolution demands that the Prime Minister respond on the matter of an increment freeze impose don teachers and public officers. And another opposes the use of Social Security funds to invest in private projects like Universal Health Services.
A National Trade Union Congress release issued late this evening covers more or less the same ground on UHS but says that threatening phone calls were made to one of the two workers representatives on the Social Security Board of Directors blaming that person for derailing the possibility of SSB investing in Universal.
Flour Going Up!
You can add flour to the list of things that gaan up. Today government announced that the controlled price has been increased by 10 cents per pound. So it’s now 60 cents a pound or $58 for a standard 100 pound sack, while whole wheat flour will now be $57, and bakers flour $62. So what will this mean for you? Well basically the price of bread will go up. Sunnyside’s owner Zebedee Pitterson told us this evening that the bottom line is that prices will, “have to increase.” He says it is a nine dollar increase and bakers won’t be able to absorb it. Those prices should go up within the next two weeks after bakers meet.
A couple things to note are that the increase is in line with increased world prices for grain and that the price of flour has not increased sine 1997. And although the statutory instrument allowing the increase has been passed, ADM Belize Mills won’t implement it until next week.
