Poverty Rate Almost 50%

Cordel Hyde

Lake Independence Area Representative Cordel Hyde was the third to weigh in on the 2016/2017 budget. It is his first address in the House since elections of November, 2015. In fact, it is his first address in the House in over four years. Representing Lake I, one of the most impoverished areas of Belize City, Hyde’s address focused on what he says is the desperate poverty of almost fifty percent of our people. He says the budget abuses the faith of the Belizean people who were asked to believe that the best is yet to come.

Cordel Hyde, Area Representative, Lake I

“Mister Speaker this budget is a disappointment, but it shouldn’t be because it is mere continuation of the slow steady march to an unequal society where a few have everything and the vast majority has nothing. The government has had a combined budget of almost eight billion dollars over the last eight years—one point five billion of which they have spent on infrastructure projects—including the three hundred and twenty-five million dollars from Petrocaribe. And yet there is more poverty today than when the U.D.P. first took over at the start of 2008. Eight years later and there are more people looking for work and can’t find work than ever before; eight years later and there are more school-aged kids out of school than ever before; eight years later and there are more people living in broken down houses than ever before. The government says they are pro-poor and I agree; they are all about keeping you poor. This budget will ensure that. This budget is like all the rest; it will not make the lives of the hundred and seventy-five thousand poor persons in this country better. In fact of the one billion dollars that will be spent in this budget, the ministry tasked with fighting poverty—the Ministry of Human Development, Social Transformation and Poverty Alleviation—will receive a mere three percent of the entire budget; a mere three percent to fight a poverty rate that is hovering near fifty percent.”