Senator Dennison Takes Cost-of-Living Fight to BTL

Standing outside the headquarters of Belize Telemedia Limited in Belize City today, Union Senator Glenfield Dennison continued his public educational campaign on the rising cost of living, this time turning his attention to utility costs and what he describes as growing financial pressure on Belizean families. Carrying a sign bearing the message “people over profit” Dennison accused BTL’s leadership of putting corporate interests ahead of Belizeans and pointed to the company’s controversial attempt to acquire Smart as an example. Today, Dennison also made it clear that he is not intimidated by the prospect of being detained, saying he is prepared to face arrest if necessary to continue drawing attention to issues affecting ordinary Belizeans.

 

Glenfield Dennison, Union Senator

“I wish they would arrest me. Please come arrest me. Unno ker me for protest because it my one man education campaign. Unno please bring it. The corporate greed of BTL was what resulted in the need for the former employees to take the severance fight to the Caribbean Court of Justice. Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the CCJ decision in Irving Marin, where I say that the directors here were putting profit over people in their decision to not pay the severance. And so I am here to remind them on the anniversary of that, of that judgment that they need to put people over profit. The employees here have built BTL and will continue to build BTL long after the board of directors is gone. And so to the board of directors, put people first, but definitely put people ahead of profit.”

 

Emily Turner, Concerned Belizean

“It’s important for us to keep up, keep monitoring what’s going on with BTL. I think that, um, in the, in the past couple months, we saw how the leadership of this company would have gone to at lengths to, in my mind, to sell out, sell out the Belizean or sell out this company by buying Smart. And I think we cannot lose focus on them. We have to keep an eye on them.”

 

Dennison said his educational campaign will continue next week before joining the “Enough is Enough” protest in Belmopan on Friday, November thirteenth.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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