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There are major developments to report tonight about the two week long standoff between the KHMH Board and its medical staff. The most critical is that afternoon the mediation process that both parties signed on to –collapsed when Belize Medical and Dental Union executives walked out of a mediation session. It was the second meeting between the union, the board and the Labour office – and it is when the KHMH Board presented its counter-proposals to the union. The mediator was Labour Commissioner Ivan Williams who told us that the BMDU was unwilling to negotiate.

Ivan Williams, Labour Commissioner
“Those proposals were presented to the union and the union after a ten minute caucus came back to the meeting and outrightly said that they do not wish to continue with the mediation process as they were totally not accepting the counter-proposals made by the KHMH in total. In other words, there are several points of discussions and we could have had an agreement on one, two, and so on but they totally refused to accept any of he proposals made by the KHMH Board. They have said that they do not wish to continue negotiations so the negotiations or what we call the mediation process has come to an end so we will no longer have any mediation.

They refused to accept any of the counter proposals. In other words it is either their proposals or nothing and we need compromise.”

Keith Swift,
Did that surprise you?

Ivan Williams,
“It surprised me because it puts me the mediator in a position where I can’t proceed.”

Keith Swift,
Did it disappoint you?

Ivan Williams,
“Yes it is disappointing because mediation in my view is a process where the parties have the opportunities to work out the differences.”

So that’s it – the mediation is over – there has been no resolution and tonight the KHMH Board and the doctors are still squarely at odds with the administration. We’ll have the fiery comments from the KHMH Board and Ministry of Health about what they say was intransigence on the part of the union shortly.