B.M.L. sends workers home

The garbage problem remains unresolved in the old capital. City Hall once more breached its most recent agreement with the Belize Maintenance Limited when it could not meet last Friday’s part payment of ten thousand dollars. As a result, BML could not pay its staff and has had to send home about a hundred of their sanitation workers. This means that the already unkempt city will be even more unsightly because the skeleton staff cannot remove the volumes of garbage as quickly as residents produce it. It is a situation that has frustrated the management and staff of BML, and once again embarrassed City Hall. We hear first from all sides, first from BML Owner, Lawrence Ellis.

Lawrence Ellis, Owner, Belize Maintenance Ltd.
“A month ago we signed an agreement with the Belize City Council for us to get the workers off the picket line. That agreement was basically to give us one payment and I had to add to that so that we could pay the workers all their back pay. All their back pay has been paid. Then the Council would give me ten thousand dollars a week for four weeks, then two full payments of seventy thousand dollars and then we supposed to start our regular payment on the fifteenth of November. The two full payments did not come, we got one and then we weren’t paid last week. I wasn’t even benefiting from this. It is just for us to meet the payroll and to move forward. I also proposed to them to buy us out because I don’t even see it getting better next year. We had to send home some people and if we don’t get pay again this week then I don’t know if anybody will be able to work. We’ll try our best to provide the service that we are supposed to provide but we can’t use the entire workforce, but we don’t want to be in a position where they can accuse us of breaching.”

B.M.L. is contracted by City Hall to clean the drains and canals, collect garbage, cut the grass, removing dead animals and prune trees.