The sickout comes after the teachers voted by an overwhelming margin to reject government's counterproposal to their request for an increment. Jomarie Lanza has more:

Last night on Facebook live BNTU President Nadia Caliz said that she was feeling sick. That's after 1532 of BNTU members voted to reject GOB's 3% salary adjustment proposal.

Nadia Caliz, BNTU President
"And not every single member will get an increment, you have to earn that there is a criteria you have to follow so throwing that out there I call that propaganda I call it gimmick. There are all these things politicians will do just to mislead the people. But don't be mislead my BNTU members don't be mislead, and don't get worked up over every single thing that you hear listen to your union, listen directly to your union, for me it has been a long day if you notice I have been stuttering and all of that but I just wanted to get the election results and for you to know I'm not feeling well and I'm heading off to bed and if I'm still not well tomorrow I got to ensure I see a doctor."

And it looks like many other teachers also came down with what is being called the green fever early this morning because parents started receiving messages like this after dropping their kids off at school.

And when we took a tour of some of the Belize City Schools hours before lunch, we saw that some still remained in session, while others had canceled classes completely, especially among the lower divisions. It proved that the sick out was effective - but, days to come will determine if it had any effect on Belmopan.

At news time, there were no official figures on the total number of classes cancelled or schools closed, but the effect was countrywide.

Next on the list of proposed industrial actions for the BNTU is to escalate to phase 2, a two day national shutdown.