Garbage situation again threatens to overflow
A week ago it appeared that the stinking overflowing mess at the city’s garbage dump was on its way to being cleaned up, but today the garbage has once again overrun the compound and is threatening to spill onto the Western Highway. Councillor Wayne Usher says he is not sure what caused the Ministry of Works to go back on an agreement made during a meeting between himself, minister Mike Espat, and his C.E.O. Dr. Michael Tewes, but all the government equipment has been removed and construction has stopped on the road that leads to the expanded dump site at the back of the present compound.
Wayne Usher, Councillor, Belize City
“We sat around a table and we agreed that they would almost immediately start doing another road that would lead behind the dump where there is enough space, then they would assist us with heavy equipment to move off everything from off front, which they did, and within a week the new access road would be completed.”
“That was agreed upon; we shook hands on that in that meeting. When we came out and I think you saw that they did bring the machine out, they did start the road. Then midway when that was being done, something happened and they stopped. No sign to us, no signal to us, no word to us, they just stopped. And so I use to come out everyday and see why, and then I took a drive up the road, it was accessible so I said listen, we are going to move in on this road. But before I could marshal that, they put a chain across the entrance and no one can get in that road. So, the road is not finished, City Council has no access, there is a chain across, and the dirt is back on the road.”
“It has been accumulating and we don’t have the equipment for type kind of pushing. We have a little backhoe and we have been trying unsuccessfully with the backhoe to try and scrape things up, scrape things up, but it gets punctured everyday because it is made of rubber tyres and we are talking about garbage with nails, zinc, glass.”
“And with the eighty-one tons per day of garbage that comes to this site, the moment you do not continue pushing it, it only takes two days for it to reach back on the streets, two days.”
Jacqueline Godwin
“So what will happen now?”
Wayne Usher
“What will happen is I went to all the media houses this morning to inform them that when they see this to know where to look and who to point to, because this is not a Belize City Council responsibility for this to happen. We had an agreement; we shook hands as gentlemen around the table that this would not happen again.”
Usher told News Five this afternoon that since talking to us, the Ministry of Works contacted him promising that by five this evening they would have sent a bulldozer to the site to start pushing back the garbage. On Monday Usher says a meeting has been scheduled in Belmopan to chart the way forward.
