CitCo makes part payment on debt to B.W.C.

Employees of the Belize Waste Control Limited (B.W.C.) took to the streets yesterday to protest the City Council’s lack of payment for garbage collection services. One of the cheques issued by the City Council just before Christmas was turned down by the bank due to insufficient funds. But today there is some progress and the manager of B.W.C., George Lamb, received part payment of sixty-two thousand dollars in cheques. And if the cheques do not bounce, CitCo will still owe B.W.C. about one hundred and twenty-four thousand dollars.

George Lamb, Manager, B.W.C.
“Well, Jose since the employee outcry yesterday, we have had the council responding through councilor Willoughby and we were assured that the cheque that they gave us on the sixteenth of December, last year was cleared Monday evening. So we got it cleared yesterday evening, and they gave us another cheque this morning. So we are going over to the bank, probably tomorrow morning to see that is cleared also. However, we are still about six weeks, at the end of this week we will be about six weeks behind in payment. So we are hoping that they would—they have assured us that Friday they will try and put something together for us. So we want to be optimistic that payment will come through. But our company really, we are in a bad position.”

Jose Sanchez
“Taking a look around Belize City, north side/south side you see a lot of garbage on fences, on the ground. Are those being picked up now? Was that intentional? What happened with the garbage collection?”

George Lamb
“It is not intentional, Jose. What happened, we can only do as much as we can with the money we have. Like I said, for seven weeks we have not been paid and the little money we have to float us now, really it’s not there anymore. So the trucks are out there on limited fuel and we have to make sure we have payments to pay our workers and our creditors. So now that we got this first payment cleared, we are hoping we can go out there with confidence and offer the service; this is an essential service.”

Lamb claims that his company has seen other trucks picking up garbage for the city and that if the council can find funds to pay another provider, then it should be able to find the funds to pay B.W.C., which is under contract to do the garbage collection.