G.O.B. Agrees to Only Pay Salaries of Sanitation Workers

Dean Barrow

The agreement between BML and G.O.B. is signed by Financial Secretary Joseph Waight and BML owner Lawrence Ellis. And just in case there is any ambiguity – G.O.B. will only pay the salaries of the workers – estimated at thirty-five thousand dollars a week and not the sum of the contract – seventy-eight thousand dollars a week. That’s good news for the hundred and seventy workers of the company since it clears up their bread and butter concerns in the short term. In the longer term, when the BML contract expires in January 2015, all BML workers will be assimilated into the Council as part of their workforce.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“We have met with the City Council and we have agreed with the City Council that when that contract expires, the City Council which has every intention of assuming the work itself; doing the works that is being done under contract by BML itself, we want to ensure that the City Council will in fact employ the workers whose employment with BML will of course comes to an end if BML no longer has the job of work that the contract provides for. So the commitment on the part of government is to pay the salaries through to January eighteenth—is it that Mister Mayor—whenever the contract expires and the City Council in turn is committing to employing those workers to having them transition to the status of Belize City Council employees when the council takes up the slack. Central Government will also assist the council in terms of the investment that will be necessary in extra equipment to enable the City Council to do the job of work that is required satisfactorily and in fact more than satisfactorily.”