Court Asked to Settle BEL Severance Dispute

The severance fight at BEL is headed back to court. After a landmark Caribbean Court of Justice ruling in the Belize Telemedia Limited case, former BEL employees are now pressing their claim for severance pay. But Belize Electricity Limited says the issue is not that simple. The company argues that its pension plan already covers those obligations, and Executive Chairman Lynn Young says BEL has asked the court to clarify where it stands legally. Young says paying severance on top of pensions, without clear guidance from the court, would be irresponsible. Here’s more on that.

 

Lynn Young, Executive Chairman, Belize Electricity Limited

“It’s kinda awkward for me because, like I said, I’m an ex-employee too, and a lot of the people who are out there picketing are my friends. And I understand, some of them have difficulties, et cetera, and if we can do something to help, you would want to do that, right? But the CCJS’s decision was related to the BTL case and was specific to the BTL case, but there are some implications for every company in the country that has a pension plan, not only BL. Social Security, Central Bank, BWSL, et cetera. Our understanding is that the decision said that if a pension plan doesn’t explicitly say that it covers severance, then severance is in addition to the pension plan. In BEL’s case, the pension deed, the deed that BL has says that it covers severance. In fact, the BEL pension plan was started with employees’ severance, right? The severance obligation of the company was calculated, and it was used to start the pension plan to ensure that the pension plan covered the severance. So I think it’d be irresponsible of any company to just go and pay out severance in addition to a pension plan just on the basis of a ruling for BTL. You need to look at the particular circumstances of each company and decide, how you move forward with it. So that is what BEL has done. We’ve gone to the court  to get clarification from the court to see if the court agrees with the legal advice that the company has gotten, that everybody has gotten their severance.”

 

BEL confirmed that a draft document has been completed and will be filed to the court soon.

 

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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