PM also waxed political to the government press office about the unions' demands to cut ministers salaries and to collect overdue taxes rather than resort to salary cuts.
He claims that the ministers have already taken that cut – which makes for less money to take care of their constituents.
He then turns the tables by saying it is those same public officers who are responsible for collecting taxes. But regardless of whose fault it is, the PM emphasized that that the unions "Plan B" won't work because the government simply does not have that kind of time.
Hon. John Briceno - Prime Minister "As it is, we've already taken a 15% cut, we're already cut our allowances by 50% but what a lot of people don't want to fully accept at this time is that those allowances basically we use that money to be able to help people in our constituencies, so it's not as if we are taking that money for ourselves, we're using it. I found it ridiculous when some people in the union are saying well that we should not even get a vehicle allowance for those who are using their own vehicle. I'm using my personal vehicle and now they are saying they want to even cut that, that's being malicious, that's not being reasonable. So I think we've been doing our part, as to the collecting of taxes, what is the irony about this is that when a union member talks about government not collecting, they are the ones that responsible to collect the taxes it's not the ministers, they are the ones and I will challenge any public officer right now to say that I have called as the minister of finance telling you don't charge tax to anybody, we need to collect the taxes but to try to collect taxes, it will take a process. Some of these people that haven't paid, some don't want to pay, some don't care and some just don't have the money, the point is, it will take time for us to be able to collect those monies and we don't have time right now, every month we have to write cheques and make direct deposits to pay salaries. Every month our overdraft goes up and then we continue to borrow more from Central Bank, so we simply don't have time, Belize has run out of time, these actions should have been done 2 years ago."
