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Earlier on, we showed you our interview with Mayor Darrell Bradley. He was speaking at an event held today by PUP and UDP mayors from all the municipalities countrywide.

All 9 mayors signed onto a policy that Bradley designed after 8 months of consultation which will give staff of the diffident municipalities security of tenure. Much like the Public Service Regulations, this policy allows for these employees to be insulated from political manipulation. Mayor Bradley told us more about it today:

Darrell Bradley - Mayor Belize City

"Today what the 9 mayors of the 9 municipalities have done is sign municipal workers regulations. We have been working on this document for the last 8 months through a task force with a chair and we're been looking through various piece of legislation including the public service regulations, internationally treaties, we've looked at the labour act. What we wanted to do was create a set of objectives, policies and practices that bring uniformity to all municipal employment service in all of the municipalities. From the time a person is engaged to the time that they leave, there's one set of regulation that governs the terms and conditions of employment. Some of the principal parts of the regulation deal with depoliticising hirings. So that we delegate the power to hire to the city administrator or the town administrator in the various municipalities. We put in place a hiring policy and practice which has to deal with interviewing people, ensuring the application has certain things in there, ensuring there is an interviewing panel and that there is no political involvement in that process. Significant other thing we dealt with, the right of union representation to say at all aspects of engagement and employ to participate actively in the union and you have the union engage on behalf of them. Question of political correctness or politics should not be something that dominates the discussion when you are dealing with staff. You should have a person there, who their only concern is allegiance, but service delivery, dealing with the staff in a professional way, promoting an efficient management of staff and not having to worry about whether or not an election will come, if i'm going to lose my job. What kind of professional service that creates, if every 3 years a good number of your staff gets fired and then some new people. You need continuity and continuity requires security of tenure."

Hon. Godwin Hulse - Minister of Public Service

"There is a thing called public service regulations which guides the public service. What that does it insulates the public servants political haul and pull and victimisation. There is a public service commission, so if you have to discipline a public officer, they go before the commission. This is like a carbon copy of that at the municipal level."