A growing public conflict has erupted in Belize over the Briceno administration’s controversial NeoPeople human resources pilot program, with the country’s largest public service union demanding an immediate halt to the rollout over unaddressed legal, privacy and transparency concerns.
Dean Flowers, president of the Public Service Union (PSU), has issued a blunt rebuke of the Ministry of Public Service, accusing government officials of pushing forward with the program without securing the union’s prior consultation consent — a violation of established collaborative processes for public sector workplace changes. At the core of the union’s objections are multiple unresolved red flags: sweeping biometric data collection, risks to public officers’ personal privacy, and confirmed sharing of government employees’ private email addresses with an outside private contractor.
Flowers emphasized that critical legal and data protection safeguards required under Belize’s 2010s Data Protection Act, passed by the current Briceno administration, have not been met. Under sections 7 and 8 of the national legislation, explicit user consent is mandatory for processing personal biometric and private information unless specific legal exemptions apply, a threshold the government has not met to date. Most notably, the government has failed to share a legally required data protection impact assessment with the union, even after repeated requests.
“I should not have to chase you down for a document that is required by law,” Flowers said in remarks broadcast on local television. “As the representative for public sector workers, you have a legal duty to share this assessment with us, and we still have not received it.” Flowers added that the government has only offered vague promises to release the document at a later date, rather than meeting its obligations before launching the pilot.
Beyond data privacy risks, the union is demanding full financial and conflict of interest transparency from the administration. Flowers argues that if the government has no undeclared connections to the project, it should publicly disclose the total contract value paid to NeoPeople for developing and operating the HR system, as well as reveal any personal or financial ties between NeoPeople’s beneficial owners and sitting government officials that could violate ethics rules.
To force disclosure of these details, the union has formally filed multiple Freedom of Information (FOI) requests requesting full access to the original NeoPeople contract and all related procurement documents. Flowers warned that proceeding with the pilot without resolving these outstanding issues does not only violate existing data protection law, but also erodes fundamental worker rights and breaks public trust in the government’s open consultation processes. The PSU is now urging all public sector employees to boycott the pilot program until all concerns are fully addressed.