$15 Million US to Fund Itz’at STEAM Academy

Michael Peyrefitte

The Government of Belize is borrowing fifteen million U.S. dollars to fund the It’zat STEAM Academy which will open its doors to Belize students at the start of the new academic year.  That facility will not be completed before September.  Nonetheless, the Ministry of Education has indicated that since the first building will be ready, classes will commence in September.  But it’s the thirty million dollar loan from I.D.B. that is raising serious concerns among opposition senators.  During Monday’s senate meeting, Senator Michael Peyrefitte spoke about the borrowing of funds to finance the project.

Senator Michael Peyrefitte

“You look at the motion and it talks about it will consist of three components whose activities will, one: increase access to instructions that accelerate learning and foundational skills and increase access to gender-specific education services to promote inclusive education.  When you read that, Madame President, and that forms the basis, the constitution, if you will, for the bill itself, and I am sure my colleagues may comment on the integrity of the motion in terms of whether or not we need to go in this direction, whether or not it needs to be for the whole country instead of just one part of the country and the like.  But, Madame President, this reads to me, and this is my narrow issue on the matter.  This reads, to me, like something that is very formational, very earth-moving in the sense that you‘re looking to increase the skills for not only students, but teachers and the like and it‘s a big task.  To me, it would form the basis of skills training that we would want to do for the country.  But this is my narrow issue on the matter and I say this, as I said in the last meeting for other bills, why do we insist on borrowing for these things?  Why would we need to borrow for such a fundamental thing?  We‘re talking about thirty million dollars, Madame President.  If you chop that, the way the loan is supposed to be disbursed, in four different, over a period of four years, just assuming it‘s seven and a half million dollars per year, just assume that.  Can we budget for that?  The things that we see budgeted for, the useless things that we see get budgeted for, ten, fifteen million dollars, I mean, can‘t we budget seven and a half million dollars per year for this?”