Former San Pedro reporter in hot water
Channel 5 Belize – Kanie Manuel, a former reporter with the San Pedro Sun, finds herself in a whole heap of trouble tonight. In fact, Manuel is in the same situation as many of the people she has so many times before covered in her capacity as a reporter. She faces charges in relation to thousands of dollars she admittedly embezzled from the San Pedro Sun newspaper and the Lions Club. We air this story not to malign or humiliate our colleague, but because she called us saying she wanted to explain how she got into the predicament and that she wants to make things right.
Thirty-year old Kanie Manuel, a mother of two young children, has been a reporter with the San Pedro Sun for a number of years. But today, she is unemployed. Manuel said her services were terminated last Friday when she showed up to work. She admits to taking forty-five thousand dollars and she has accepted to pay it back. But she feels the contract her owner, Tamara Sniffin gave her to sign was unreasonable, and that she had no choice at the time but to sign.
Kanie Manuel: “I was embarrassed, I had to go talk to my parents, I knew they were gonna be brought into this, into something that didn’t necessarily involve them but they had to be dragged into the embarrassment of this. Being scared at that time about what my future would hold for my kids, for my life, for my career.”
Marion Ali
“So you felt threatened or forced?”
Kanie Manuel
“You could say that in a way, yes especially because I wasn’t given any time to really internalise what the contract said. All I had in my mind in that moment was my parents, my kids.”
The contract, signed a few years ago, was drafted by a local law firm and is several pages in length. When we visited the San Pedro Sun and spoke with Tamara Sniffin, she did not have any on camera comments, but did tell us, without going into details, that Manuel had violated some portions of the contract and that is why she is filing charges against her. She did say she would issue a statement after the charges have been filed. But Manuel says she has been trying her best to pay off the debt, but because the demands of the document have been overwhelming.
Kanie Manuel
“There are certain clauses in there that I do not accept. But at that time I wasn’t thinking about that, I was thinking sign the paper, try to get through it as fast as you can. For over a year and a half I have not been receiving one cent from the San Pedro Sun as part of repayment.”
Marion Ali
“So how have you been living? How do you pay your bills? How do you maintain your kids, your family?”
Kanie Manuel
“I’ve tried side projects, I’ve tried other jobs, but as you know, a reporter is a twenty-four-seven job.”
Manuel says she has been working literally for free for almost two years to pay off part of the debt. The other part will be paid off as soon as the Ministry of Lands transfers a parcel of land she owns over to Tamara Sniffin. Manuel says she wants a new chance to right her wrong, a new less binding document that will give her that chance to pay off the difference and a chance to regain the trust of her readers.
Kanie Manuel
“We all do things in our lives unfortunately and I did. I don’t expect any less from you as the media to report it. As you say it is a story and it is unfortunate that it is me on this side. My work speaks for itself and all this year and a half my work never once faltered and it was good work. All this time working with you guys, working with other media associates, my work never faltered.”
Manuel says that because of the commitment she signed with the San Pedro Sun owner, she is also indebted to the local Lions Club, an amount she hopes to repay within a month’s time.
$45,000? Forty-five THOUSAND dollars???