Email

Print

We also got comment from the Belmopan City Council's City Administrator Ralston Frazer. Frazer admits they were late on payment but didn't think it should have been an issue since he says the city council and the SSB have a payment arrangement. Aside from that, Frazer spins the issue around saying that they are the ones who are owed money.

Ralston Frazer- City Administrator, Belmopan City Council
"I will be the first to let you know that yes the Belmopan City council had been late in a payment or two, as it relates to the Social Security Board, but in a way that it would not and should not have affected any employee. The reason for that is we were constantly in communication with the relevant authorities at the Social Security Board. And we had an arrangement in place with them where we would have been caught up with the small arrear that we had by, I think it was, June end or July end, I can't remember at this point. But nonetheless, this matter came up and the mayor and his council and with myself we had decided that we will have to do what we need to do because, in my opinion, there is obviously something amiss here. To give you the end of the story, and I do want to go back a little to give you some explanation; the end of the story is as we sit here right now, I am sure the Social Security Board can attest to this, we are not in arrears with the Belize Social Security Board as we sit here right now in this interview. But I do want to bring this to our attention. I'm trying to figure out. When an employee is making a claim for her three days sick leave or plus- more than three days- the situation is that the employer will make the payment to the employee as per usual and the Social Security Board would make the check to reimburse the employer. For these days the Social Security Board would become responsible for the payment for that employee. So, I'm thinking, was the employee cheated in any way by not getting the full payment? I'm thinking no. If anybody didn't get a payment it would have been the Belmopan City Council not getting reimbursed by the Social Board; and it would have been- I guess- on the lack of contribution to the particular individual. So, I don't know, if anybody should have been saying that we haven't gotten our money's it would have been the institution. And it leaves me to wonder what was the individual up to? What was the mischief? Couldn't the individual come to, I don't know, let's say our HR department and say listen I went to Social Security and x, y and z and that could have been addressed."

Both parties are addressing this issue. We will keep following up on this story. Again, let this be a lesson for all employees out there to check their contribution history at SSB.