And, while the PM is away - the PSU and its members are fulminating against the government.
That's after a July second letter from the Cabinet secretary surfaced last night.
The letter informs Government's CEO's that their salaries and allowances will remain as recommended in May 2020. As you know, at that time, the PUP government hadn't taken office and as such hadn't committed to a 10% cut as yet.
So, it seems to mean that public and contract officers took a cut but the CEO's did not.
And that's not going down too well at all with public officers who are living the pain of that 10% cut. Today, via zoom the PSU president said he was shocked, but not surprised at what he feels is double dealing:
Dean Flowers - President, PSU
"My immediate reaction when a copy of the letter was sent to me yesterday was one of a relative of Kendra, the famous Kendra, that was my immediate reaction. I was extremely shocked and surprised. Now there is a false narrative that is being spread out there and they start circulating this last night where I understand that the CEO was saying they already received a 10% cut in their salaries in May of 2020 which is not the furthest thing from the truth but it's a blatant lie, so I want to dispel of that forthwith. I have here circular number 5 on the 29th with reference to CEO, these were the measures taken under the Barrow administration. For CEO, for the period May 20 to April 21 they were to see a reduction in their housing and entertainment allowance from 1500 dollars a month to 750 dollars. That was one of the cut that was levied on the CEO, a reduction in their entertainment allowance and also there was a reduction in their gratuity from 20% to 15% for the period 1st May 2020 to 30th April 2021. So absolutely no adjustment was made on the salaries of the CEO who I want to dispel that blatant lie that someone published on Facebook last night that's the reason why they are not included in this 10% salary cut because they were cut last year, nobody salary was affected last year, no CEO under the Barrow administration salary was cut. So, this narrative that the new CEO are in some agreement that their salary would reflect the same reduction as those past CEOs is untruthful and as I stated clearly from circular 5 of 2020 it was simply their entertainment allowance, which we have advocated should be abolished completely but it was cut by 50% and their gratuity was reduced by 5%. This is very disheartening, I have taken the liberty as well to look at the emolument act and the statutory instrument and I want to challenge and ask the Belizean public to look at SI 59 of 2001 and the public sector emolument and allowances reduction act of 2021 and you will see here that in neither of these documents speak to public officers but it does not list chief executive officers under schedule 1 and so we have been played once again for a talented set of individuals."
Jules Vasquez
"Do you think you all will be able to harness all this anger that is welling up in the public officers now that they are living this 10% cut and feel like this is an active slap in their face."
Dean Flowers
"This is an active and royal and b-i..c-h slap in the Belizean people face and more so in the face of our front-line officers. Again, we will continue to inform, we will continue to education, and we will continue to take instructions from our membership in terms of how we address this. I will engage with my members today again to go through the legislation and to provide to them our options legally and our options where people power is concerned. Again, as some people say, you always try the Martin Luther King approach and when that does not work, then it's time to try the Malcolm X approach and more and more we're seeing the Belizean people and the laborers of this country are being taken lightly by this administration and so I believe we're sitting on a ticking time bomb."
