Mayor Confirms That BML Contract Will Not Be Renewed…

Darrell Bradley

But while the Mayor is focused on the bottom line, the fact is that the lives of more than one hundred employees will be drastically impacted when BML’s contract is discontinued. Employees of BML are already crying foul, claiming that the Mayor intends to do away with their daily bread. Well, with no apologies…he is since he has no intention of renewing BML’s contract. But Bradley told News Five that he hasn’t lost sight of the plight of the workers who will shortly be unemployed.

Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor

“I am very mindful of that. And one of the major focuses of the municipality is on job creation. We look at it in our infrastructure; that we are able to work with CISCO to create jobs for people who are marginalized; we look at it at B.T.L. Park where we created twenty-eight businesses; we are looking at other job-creation initiatives that are being sponsored and pushed by the municipality. So I am very mindful of the fact that this is something that affects people’s lives and their livelihoods. And in our focus and in replacing some of the work, not all, we are prepared to take on some of those workers, but not all. I would hope though as a balance that if you know that your company, the major contracting part of your company, will seize to do business with them one year in advance. This is why I am raising these issues now, that people could make preparatory work. You are not guaranteed a job for life. So that we are telling people that we are not or have any intention of renewing this contract and we are giving them one year’s notice. So that those workers and that company as well should take ameliorated steps to ensure that they are not hit hard by that discontinuance. Dah noh like the day before we are telling you we noh wah renew unu contract. We are giving you one year’s notice. So that people who work for them should be advised that that is the position, they likewise should advise themselves that this is the position and I am saying further that in relation to some of the workers, we will be able to absorb some of them even if we pay them—and I know they are not making—two hundred dollars a week and we take a hundred of them—and I know there is not a hundred—that’s only going to cost us twenty-thousand dollars.”

Again, we are told that the Council is in arrears to BML for some eighteen weeks, which works out to more than a million dollars.