Fuel Shortage Hasn’t Impacted Security Services
Tonight diesel fuel remains an extremely scarce commodity in the country…and those few gas stations that have gotten stock in by tanker truck from Guatemala are dispensing frugally. The ship is expected to arrive in Belize on Tuesday night, which means that things should return to normal by Thursday morning. The shortage has impacted many sectors, but one which cannot afford any impact is the area of emergency services – like calling 911 and having them tell you they can’t respond because the gas tanks of their police vehicles are empty. We are told that hasn’t happened, and when we checked today, it was to find out that inadvertently, the Ministry of National Security was prepared for just such a crisis.
George Lovell
Voice of: Ret’d. Col. George Lovell, C.E.O., Ministry of National Security
“From my ministry not to the extent that one would have expected, simply because we had just in both Coast Guard and B.D.F. topped up our resources, our fuel tanks with fuel. As a result of that it didn’t really have the sort of impact that one would have expected on us. Police who don’t really have the capacity to carry bulk fuel were able to get by because in Belize City while they were being rationed they were able to get sufficient to carry out their operations, and I believe if it had reached the stage where the entire country was impacted to an extent where we would have been pushed for a longer period, we would have been able to lean on our sister agencies, the B.D.F. and Coast Guard to be able to take us through another week or so I think. We were fortunate because our people were coming to the end of the financial year and all our reserves were stocked up. We didn’t anticipate that there would have been a shortage of fuel, but as you know we are at the end of our financial period which may or may not have been the reasons we stock up. I say may or may not because we tend to keep a reserve, but we did so more than we would normally do on end of month basis, simply because we were coming to the end of our financial cycle also.”
Late this evening, News Five received verification from APBEL that the ship left Curacao on Saturday and is scheduled to arrive in Belize at midday Wednesday.
