7 News Belize

Teachers Angry At Nepotism
posted (June 24, 2010)
Today was report card day at many schools signaling the end of the school year. But for some teachers and parents their patience with school management was also at an end. We start with the teachers of Ladyville Evangelical - eight of the staff of 13 boycotted school today because they have major issues with the school management. Since January, they have been trying to get an audience with the management, the Teachers Union and the ministry of education, but to no avail. And now at the end of the school year when fellow teacher Noemi Pol was terminated, they figured they had to bring the case to the media. They say most prominent among their issues is the allegation of nepotism against manager Eutemio Chi.

Esther McCord, Teacher
"We have issues of hiring untrained family members of the general manager. We have issues of delay in back pay being issued to teachers who are trying to uplift themselves professionally. The absence of pay sheets at the end of the month. Usually we don't get these pay sheets until the end of the year to sign and you know that the norm is that you sign when you get your pay. We have also delay in payment of dues to the Belize National Teachers Union. Our management is supposed to deduct from our salary $20 per month and send it to the Union and that hasn't been happening. We also have lack of maintenance of our school buildings. We have a teacher that has constantly been sick because of the environment, the rat droppings, rat bat feces and all that. I forgot to mention that there is also an issue of nepotism meaning that the general manager hires most of his family members as a part of the teaching staff as principal and vice principal. What we want is that management be fair with us, we want them to be fair we want them to sit and discuss with us, show us how these things can be improved and improve them. We don't want to quarrel with our management, we want better for our school. We are from Ladyville and when these children that pass through our hands we want to see something good come out of them."

Eight teachers came to our studio and the other 5, they claim, are related to General Manager Chi. The school has 365 students. The teachers shared with us a management chart which shows that manager Eutemio Chi or his relatives occupy senior posts at two of three schools under the United Evangelical Churches of Belize Management. The ministry of education was not aware of the issue and we could not reach the school management. We will try and do so tomorrow.

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