The stevedores and the Government of Belize are close to reaching a compromise on the unsettled redundancy payment which government inherited from the Port's previous owners.
The CWU was asking for 4.8 million dollars, but government has counter proposed 1.5 million dollars. And, based on other concessions - it seems they may have a deal.
But hammering out the fine details is a proving challenging - and we got an update from the Prime Minister today:
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"That has been a contentious issue for many years. We do believe that the CWU do have some valid concerns but at the same time I do believe that the Port also has some valid concerns. As I pointed out in the two meetings I had with the CWU on Wednesday and Thursday, it is important for us to be able to modernize the Port. The previous owners or the people that manage the Port, they were not investing in the Port, we need to invest in the Port, there's now competition, there's a port down south and the Coastal Road is making it easier to be able to move containers from down south up to Belize City so I made that point to the CWU and they recognize it and they said, listen, we want to work, we don't want to be fighting, we don't want to be every minute going on strike. So we are working on a plan and I hope if not today by tomorrow morning, we'll be able to make the announcement but the whole idea is that we're going to have an agreement that will say, okay, let's start fresh, as of now, everything that we were concerned about, we're going to leave it to the back and we move forward with a new page and to be able to work more effectively and more efficiently in the port so we can compete with the other port in this country."
Reporter:
"You had to step in to resolve this issue because the negotiating team, the new one, made an underhanded proposal similar to what Waterloo was presenting, do you expect that with those parties there, there will be a good relationship going forward in the best interest of the Port?"
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"I do expect they will have a good relationship, their relationship is getting better and that proposal that they did as what the management told me, you make a proposal, you give your counter proposal but the most important thing in that proposal is, and yesterday when I met with them again, and they're saying all the recitals, that they want to take that off and go to the proposals, I said I have no problem, take it off because we're not here to rub anything on anybody's face, so we're taking all of that off and then going through the proposal, pretty much the proposal has been accepted so we're just trying to finalize, we had to write a new document, so the two lawyers, the Port lawyer and the lawyer for CWU were to have met yesterday. i was hoping, I should don't have done, but I offered because I wanted to finish this to say I would go back to Belize City to sign the agreement today but I don't think I'll be able to get there because I have something planned for 12:00 and in the evening so quite likely I will say let's meet tomorrow morning before I go to campaign inSanta Elena, but we're very pleased with the way it has been going, very cordial."
We'll let you know what comes out of tomorrow's meeting.
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