City Councillor plans to fix garbage problems in the city

City hall announced on Tuesday that it will be doing something about the Belize City streets. There’s another problem that the city is now attempting to cope with… garbage. There are many empty lots where garbage is constantly dumped under the cover of darkness. It’s an old problem that the Belize City Council has tackled for decades and the councilor responsible for garbage collection, Philip Willoughby, says that he hopes 2010 is the year that the public will have some civic pride and make the city a clean one. Willoughby intends to survey businesses when they apply for liquor and trade licenses to find out which ones use Belize Waste Control and which establishments employ other means of disposing of their garbage. The councilor believes that would make it easier to identify which establishments are polluting the city and he says he will use the full force of the courts to prosecute the offenders.

Phillip Willoughby, Belize City Councillor
“In order for us to further tackle the hot spots and improper disposal of waste, the council has embarked on an initiative to request that when the commercial business owners come into the council to pick up, pay for or renew or new applicants for trade license that they disclose to the council how and what they are doing and with their waste that is being generated. The options are to go the route of Belize Waste Control Limited collecting the garbage or you taking it directly to the dump site, the land fill yourself. Through this process we hope to capture how you are dealing with it and therefore we relieve the city of the unsightly look of the dirt and filth and waste in abandoned lots and the street corners and so forth. After we go through this process and you identify you want to go through either route, throughout the course of the year if the council captures you being irresponsible or derelict with your waste, then we go through the procedures to seek how we go to put you back on board or an attempt through the laws to pull your trade license or liquor license.”

Marion Ali
“So how much more will it cost the businessman to select one of these two options?”

Phillip Willoughby
“On the books it’s twenty-two dollars per cubic yard plus GST and a cubic yard of garbage is about eight fifty-five gallon bags or four drums of garbage.”