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The COVID-19 crisis has negatively affected all Belizeans, some more than others, but new realities have now come knocking on the door of the nation’s teachers. 

Normally, the Government of Belize would have paid teachers their monthly salaries tomorrow. The practice has been that teachers receive their pay on the last Friday of the month. But because the economy is at a standstill due to the State of Emergency, teachers aren’t going to be paid until next Wednesday.

We’ve seen this memo from the Ministry of Education to General Managers, Government, and Grand-aided Pre-primary and Primary Schools. 

In it, Chief Executive officer Deborah Domingo says, quote, “The Ministry of Education has been informed by the Ministry of Finance that the payroll for teachers, paid directly by the Government of Belize… has been pushed back, and will be paid on Wednesday, April 29th, 2020. In these truly challenging times, the appeal is for patience and an understanding that this situation could not have been avoided.â€￾

It’s tough news for teachers who get paid once a month, and so, we reached out to BNTU president Elena Smith for comment on the initial reaction from teachers. She told us via video conference today that teachers can understand why this has happened, but they aren’t happy about it. On a video call, she explained why:

Hon. Elena Smith - President, BNTU
"We just go it this morning from the ministry telling us that it would have been delayed until the 29th the memo said. So we tried our best to have our branch executive inform their membership and get feedback from them and you know that from this morning until now, we would have not been able to reach majority of our members but for who have sent in some sort of position of feeling, observations if you will to their branch executives we have noted from them that they are extremely disappointed. The reason being that the teachers last salary was on March 20th I believe, so that would have been the last pay that they receive, so they've been almost a month and half without a salary. Unlike public officers, we only get paid once a month, so that's a huge concern for them and noting they are lacking now, you have to be buying things in bulk. So that was the initial concern. A part from that, the other reaction well you just had a meeting with ministry on Tuesday, how come we were not informed of that? When was it that was known and how come we were not informed about that. We don't want to sound ungrateful because teachers are saying they are very grateful that they are able to get a salary. So we want to put that out there, we are very grateful that we can get a salary. There are some persons right now who from the time this thing started were put on half pay, so we are fortunate that we are getting full pay. A lot of our teachers have called me to express that they are grateful for that, so we thank god that we can still do that. We know the situation at hand and we understand that because the economy is locked down right now, government isn't collecting what it's suppose to be collecting in tax and all of those other field. So we are aware of that and many of them do understand that, I think the bigger concern though is how worse this is going to get because you will note that, you might not know but there are some teachers who are single parents but we also have some of us who our spouses have lost their jobs because of what is going on. So we went from having two incomes in the home to now only having one."

The BNTU President has since told us that she has learned about a plan where some of the high school teachers will be paid by their school management. That is possible because they receive grants from the Government, and some of those funds may still be available at this time. Everyone else will have to wait until next Wednesday.