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At yesterday’s Cabinet meeting – government rejected the request of the Trade Union Congress to sit on the regional oversight committees for the Venezuelan housing money. It is a stinging rebuke for the Trade Union Congress which first declined to sit on the regional oversight committees in February and then last week, after we broke the story about their refusal to sit on the committees, they had a change of heart and submitted the names of their representatives to the Prime Minister. That offer was rejected and today Prime Minister Dean Barrow didn’t mince words about why. He told me that the invitation for the unions to sit on the oversight committees was a courtesy. And more than that, according to Prime Minister Barrow the unions had their opportunity and now the ship has already sailed.

Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister of Belize
“Let us understand first of all this is a government project, the government had absolutely no legal obligation to invite anybody to assist the government in the implementation of the project. We voluntarily right from the start invited both the Chamber of Commerce and the NTUCB to assist. Earlier on the Chamber of Commerce backed out. They were not happy with decision we took to give the monies from Venezuela to the poor people of Belize free of cost but we got the monies free how on earth we can turn around in any event, it exposed a fundamental difficulty.

We are the government, we are the ones that have been elected, we want to partner with the Chamber of Commerce, with the NTUCB but ultimately we must govern, we make the decisions and when there is an honest difference of opinion unless we can be persuaded that the position we take is wrong, our opinion is what will prevail, that is why people elected us. I am not sure at what stage the NTUCB indicated that it too was not interested in proceeding in partnering with us.

There seem to be or there now seems to be a dispute over whether they wrote a formal letter or whether they communicated in another fashion but I cannot recollect for sure and I don’t want to misrepresent anybody but it was clear to us that the NTUCB was no longer interested. The Chamber of Commerce formally indicated, I know that for sure, it was clear to us that NTUCB was no longer interested because they began taking heat from the media for refusing our invitation to participate, they come now belatedly and say they now want to participate. I am sorry, I am sorry that ship has sailed, the government gave you every opportunity, you did not take the opportunity. Five months after or six months after because of what the media has said to you, you come and want to, the answer is no.”

Jacqueline Godwin,
“But don’t you see Cabinet’s decision in anyway affecting your promise about transparency?”

Hon. Dean Barrow,
“But how can it affect the promise of transparency? We are doing the thing in a transparent fashion. Transparency does not mean you put the social partners only in implementation unit for every project that you do, that is nonsense. We as a government have an obligation to be transparent, it means we put the material out there, it means we invite you the media to come and inspect the records as much as you want where does the definition of transparency say that you can only be transparent if you have the union or the chamber of commerce acting as a kind of parallel government absolutely not.

We will continue in the future to operate in the way we have in the past where we think it would be useful and it would assist the whole social process, we would extend invitations to these people but you cannot believe that anybody will hold the government at ransom, they cannot begin to develop a sense of entitlement, they cannot begin to feel that it is their right to serve on every implementation unit that the government sets up with respect to what are government projects, no man. We will seek to involve them as much as we possibly can when in a situation like this we make an offer and they either reject or don’t take it us and a sufficient time elapses, I am afraid they do not get a second chance and I make no apologizes for it.”

General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress Javier Roberts told us this evening that the union will be meeting tomorrow to discuss government’s decision and other issues.