Telemedia and G.O.B.: Pressure up!

It is eyeball to eyeball between the Barrow Administration and Telemedia over the Accommodation agreement signed in 2005 between the two. On one side the government has declared it as invalid and on the other, Telemedia has maintained that it is binding and legal. And today if Belmopan did not get the memo, Telemedia stepped up the ante issuing a blistering missive to the government on behalf of its employees. This follows on the heels of a recent meeting between the top management of the utility company and Prime Minister Barrow that ended with more questions than answers. According to Telemedia, the agreement has been enforced for more than three years but it was not until March 2008, that G.O.B. took the unilateral decision not to comply with its obligations without any explanation as to why.

And to show that G.O.B. wants to have its cake and eat it, Telemedia says the government intends to recover certain payments under the quote “invalid” unquote agreement by increasing taxes on gross revenues to twenty-four point five percent, a move which it describes as ridiculous.
According to its statement today, Telemedia discloses that the P.M. has confirmed to some on its management team, that the only reason for the off five point five percent increase in tax, is to recover what G.O.B. believes is due under the same Agreement.

Telemedia says G.O.B. owes the company fourteen point seven million dollars but instead is forcing the utility company to pay an additional fourteen million in business tax. But there is more, and according to Telemedia, G.O.B. is also facing a claim in the London Court of International Arbitration in excess of twenty-seven million dollars and growing everyday. If the agreement is found to invalid, then says Telemedia, it sue the government for fraudulent misrepresentation.
Telemedia makes the point that it is clearly wrong for any government to believe that it can simply walk away from a commercial agreement anytime it wishes.

Caught in the middle are its owners, the B.T.L. Employees Trust that holds twenty-three point two percent in hares, the Hayward Charitable Trust with seventy-one point two Percent, the Public Services Union and Belize Teachers Union with one point six percent and more than nine hundred Belizeans.