On November 6, 2026, Belize’s leading national labor advocacy body, the National Trade Union Congress of Belize (NTUCB), formally announced its unwavering opposition to a controversial rate adjustment proposal tabled by Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) that would double the existing monthly Cost of Power Adjustment (COPA) cap from 5% to 10%. The move comes at a time when thousands of Belizean households are already navigating severe cost-of-living pressures, with many low- and middle-income families forced to make impossible trade-offs between essential utility services, groceries, and other basic needs to avoid service disconnections.
NTUCB President Ella Waight emphasized during an official submission to the Public Utilities Commission that the union’s rejection of the proposed rate hike is not a dismissal of the realities of global energy market volatility, but a practical recognition that the country’s working population has no remaining financial buffer to absorb additional costs. Waight outlined that large segments of the workforce are already juggling overlapping financial strains: many households must prioritize paying one utility bill over another each month to avoid having power, water, or telecommunications services cut, while single parents are increasingly taking on two or more informal and formal jobs just to afford staple food items for their families.
While the NTUCB has long supported public campaigns to encourage residential electricity conservation to reduce overall energy demand and household costs, Waight stressed that ordinary consumers should not be forced to bear the full financial burden of operational cost overruns incurred by the utility provider. The union’s formal written objection, submitted directly to the national regulatory body, calls on the Public Utilities Commission to reject BEL’s proposal outright for the foreseeable future, and to launch a full, transparent audit of the company’s operational expenditures to identify alternative cost-saving measures that do not pass excess costs onto vulnerable ratepayers. The statement makes clear that the NTUCB will continue to advocate on behalf of all working Belizeans to ensure utility pricing policies do not push already struggling households further into financial precarity.