P.S.U. Wants Public Officers to Help Address Price Gouging

Dean Flowers

There is also the issue of price gouging. It’s a problem that’s costing Belizeans a lot of money and one that is proving challenging for authorities to address. PSU President Dean Flowers explained that the JUNT is suggesting training a group of fifty-five public officers from various regions that would play a role in addressing this problem. He says that these officers will assist the Price Control Unit within the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security in issuing citations to businesses engaged in price gouging.

Dean Flowers, President, P.S.U.

“We touched a little bit of course on the ongoing struggle that the Belizeans are going through where cost of living is concerned and how we address that. As an update to our proposal to government to assist them and to assist the price control in unit, finally we finally got word from the Ministry of Agriculture who has informed us and I believe this was late yesterday, they invited us to make submissions for them for public offices to be trained. From our end we’ll be recommending fifty-five public offices who will be spread across the country to assist the price control unit. It is then for the Minister of Agriculture or Cabinet to advise him in terms of the number of officers that we will be actually appointing but we are recommending fifty-five be trained in the first instance and we will try out best to ensure those public officers come from a wide cross section of the country to be able to monitor these retail business who continue to exploit the Belizean people because of lack of monitoring on the part of the Price Control Unit as a result of being understaffed, of course. From what I understand from the ministers today, the Honorable Mai did inform them that between, I believe it is August and now, a substantial amount of tickets have been issued. Those were issued by price control public officers from within the Ministry of Agriculture who work under that unit. And interestingly enough, I understand the bulk of those tickets issued were issued here in Belize City, primarily, I believe the minister informed us in the Lake Independence and some other area on the south side. But I’m glad that at least the pilot project, because I understand that was primarily a pilot. And so now, with our assistance, hopefully much more tickets. Like I said, hopefully Belizeans will start to see the business sector, primarily the retail sector acting a little bit more considerate when pricing their goods.”