Cordel Hyde Wants GOB to Take Control of Boledo Franchise

And while Oscar Requeña demanded that the Government repair the deplorable roads in his constituency, Lake I Area Rep., Cordel Hyde, is demanding that the government re-take control of boledo. The boledo franchise was privatized in 2009 with the Government granting Brads and Company Limited administrative powers. That company was granted an exclusive ten-year contract and according to Hyde, has made millions of dollars—millions which the government ought to be making.

Cordel Hyde

Cordel Hyde, Area Representative for Lake Independence

“As far as I am concerned this was an artificially generated contracted; generated for one reason and one reason only. The second point is this, Madam Speaker, the only problem I can recall is that government was complaining that they are only getting a million dollars in taxes from the sale of boledo, five hundred thousand let’s say. So they say ‘Okay we are going to give Mr. Brad and his friends the goose that laid the golden egg so just he can pay them two million dollars in taxes’. Well, as I understand it, from very knowledgeable people, Brads and friends are raking in somewhere between twenty two million and thirty million dollars a year in profits. Now let’s check that out for a minute, Madam Speaker. If they are making thirty million dollars a year over the last nine years you’re talking about two hundred and seventy million dollars. Let us say it is not thirty million. Let’s say it is twenty million dollars a year. Over a nine year period you are talking about a hundred and eighty million dollars. But let’s say it is not. Let us say it is ten million dollars a year they would have gotten ninety million over the last nine years. Who foregoes that can of money? Which government foregoes that kind of money? Which government? But you’re saying to us that you can’t administrate boledo, that you are incompetent, that you can’t run boledo. Why else are you outsourcing boledo to Brads and Friends? So, it escapes me why we don’t want to take back out boledo. Why is it that we are contended with making sure that a small clique to collect all the revenue whilst we have to hustle.”

Dean Barrow

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“The member’s arguments would have been far more compelling if he had been able to furnish us with substantiated data. You can’t just pull figures out of the air and then say, ‘Well he is making thirty million, if it is not thirty it is twenty or let’s say it is ten.’ We need the facts and the bottom line is that when the boledo was privatized, the government was making a grand total of five hundred thousand dollars a year. There was a period when even that revenue stream dropped. And the privatization was not entered into until after we had set up a committee to examine the issue chaired at the time by Godwin Hulse who was not then a UDP, at least not a card carrying. Actually in those days he appeared to be one of the greatest fans of that outstanding entity known as the Kremandala Empire.”