18 Years Defending Belize, Still Waiting for His Benefits
A retired Belize Defence Force soldier who spent eighteen years protecting Belize’s borders, including confrontations with Guatemalan forces at the Sarstoon, is yet to receive his pension. He says it’s been five months already since he left the military, yet his personal file is showing little progress in the process of getting what he is due.
News 5 has received several complaints from different soldiers saying the same thing.
Felix Ack is one of those soldiers. He joined the Belize Defence Force (BDF) at 18 and gave nearly two decades to the force. Now 37, he has been forced to take a job on Caye Caulker, which he described as feeling even “further from my family.”
The reason, he says, is his gratuity and pension have not come through, and his personal file has not moved from Price Barracks in five months.
“I really need my benefits. I believe I’ve served my time already, and waiting for it makes me frustrated that I have to seek another job,” Ack added. “I believe the government can do better by facilitating our benefits as fast as possible. Five months is too much to wait.”
News 5 put these concerns to Francis Usher, CEO of the Ministry of Defence and Border Security. While he recognised the problem openly, he attributed the lengthy wait to the number of tiers in the established system. Usher said each tier is necessary to ensure soldiers receive exactly what they are owed.
“The sad reality, and it hurts you to tell them, is that the process of calculating and getting approvals for retirement benefits is extremely lengthy,” Usher said.
He laid out the full chain a retirement file must travel: from force headquarters to the ministry, then to the Security Services Commission, which meets only once a month. “If a meeting had just happened, then you would have to wait an entire month before they even table your retirement,” Usher added.
Once it leaves the Security Services Commission, it goes to the treasury for a full salary and increment review spanning the soldier’s entire career, then to the Ministry of Finance, then the Public Service Commission, then back to the Ministry of National Defence before any payment can be processed.
Usher pointed to a push toward digitising records across the BDF and the Coast Guard as the long-term fix. The goal is to eliminate the physical file chain that slows every step. “The hope is that by doing that, it can speed up the process because we don’t have to wait for physical files to get to the ministry. It can then be an electronic review, a click of the button,” he said.
However, Usher clarified that the progress of digitising the records is slow, saying, “I would love it if tomorrow we just had a digitised process where people could get their benefits because, believe me, you spent your entire life working for it, so you’re deserving of it. But I also now understand the other side because we do have to be stewards of the public purse. We do have to make sure that we are administrating it responsibly.”
For now, retired soldiers continue to wait months, and in some cases more than a year, for money they spent decades earning.