CitCo faces tough choices on sanitation

Any politician will tell you that making promises is easy; it’s keeping them that causes problems. In office less than two months, the new Belize City Council is discovering that the job requires tough decisions, which often involve choosing the lesser of two evils.

Dale Trujeque, Advisor, Belize City Council
?We realize that some of the work that our sanitation people are doing are work that would be duplicated by B.M.L. and S.E.L. We have been reviewing constantly, we started discussing these things with the two sanitation companies and the council eventually took the decision that we will have to eliminate most of the positions in what is called the sanitation environmental department.?

That department includes some sixty people working as secretaries, drivers, and sanitation workers … personnel the Council?s budget simply cannot afford. The solution? Convince the city?s three environmental contractors to hire the jobless. Based on negotiations so far, Sanitation Engineering Limited has already agreed to take on thirty-three workers.

Dale Trujeque
?Of that twenty seven that remains, we will have to retain a small crew to monitor the performance of those contracts. And then if we cannot place the remainder outside of that crew, we will try to place them else within the council.?

Rupert Marin, Mgr., Sanitation Engineering Limited
?Fu we staff dah two hundred and sixty-three, when we tek on these additional people, we only deh tek on like eight more than we normally have. So dah no like we di tek on thirty-three thousand weh we no mi di spend already.?

?We have a high turnover of people right. There will be times when our staff will be at two hundred and seventy-five, there are times when it will be two hundred, so we go through loads of people weekly. I mean, at least six, seven people come, try, realize that pick up paper on the street dah no just how it look.?

According the City Council, this latest tactic should save taxpayers more than three hundred and sixty thousand dollars in salaries. But as for terminating or negotiating those much maligned private sanitation contracts … forget about it.

Dale Trujeque
?We were legally advised that these contracts are open-shut. We have to work with them. We cannot comment whether they are bloated or not.?

And those three contracts with S.E.L. northside, S.E.L. southside, and Belize Maintenance Limited cost more than one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a week. City administrators hope this latest arrangement will give the council some breathing room to catch up on over a million dollars in arrears to all three companies.

Zenaida Moya, Belize City Mayor
?No one is being terminated arbitrarily. We came here and we met things that were going on. For example, we would get files and records of persons missing work eleven, twelve times out of the month … eleven twelve times out of the month and still being paid normally. And it affects the morale of all employees, because when they go there and they know they know that this person can miss work, today, tomorrow and it doesn?t matter, that person will be paid, and the council does nothing about it, or this person can … we found an individual stealing for example and we just leave that individual, ah mean how will that look on the council. And the staff, they feel upset knowing that the council was continuing to pay these individuals. If you work, and you work and you do your job, there will be no reason whatsoever. This U.D.P. City Council didn?t come here to lay off workers.?

But laying off workers is not the Mayor?s only problem. She?s also trying to retain use of the garbage dump and Pound Yard; important pieces of real estate that were allegedly sold by the old P.U.P. council.

Zenaida Moya, Belize City Mayor
?I?m hoping if it is true and whoever signed on and whoever bought it will not come to myself or this council asking for us to move off right now because we cannot do so. I?m saying it right here so that they listen. And as it pertains to the Pound Yard, same thing goes from there unless somebody can donate a nice piece of land so we can take the workers over there so that we can move our equipment, the council will look into that. If anybody wants to be a philanthropist, hey, we would welcome that.?

The house cleaning will now move to a review of the administrative staff, but the council says it must also deal with another financial mess regarding mismanagement of employee deductions.

Dale Trujeque
?You?ve heard on the radio and the media about money deducted for Courts, we?ve had our workers had their stuff taken back by Courts because the money was never paid in on behalf of the workers. We are trying to bring the Courts account current. Money deducted for loans for workers from banks, council is now faced with the fact that workers, pensioners of the council are bringing charges made on their accounts for penalty fees that we now have to incur because the money was never paid in or wasn?t paid in on time on behalf of these people. D.F.C., some of our people, their houses are about to auctioned because their D.F.C. loans were not paid up. The deductions, everything I?m saying, the deductions were made from the workers? money or in the case of the business taxes, from the sanitation companies money … never paid up.?

According to the Belize City Council, on May twenty-second, the workers will officially become employees of Sanitation Engineering Limited. Phase two of the City Council negotiations will include discussions with B.M.L. to determine if they can take on any additional workers.