COLA President Takes Aim at Minister of Labor Over Rat Remark

Geovanni Brackett

The Minister of Labour, Godwin Hulse, last Friday, blamed the local media for inciting the international coverage of the story of the rat that bit a baby in the incubator at the Western Regional Hospital. The video of the huge rat running around in an incubator also spread quickly on the internet as soon as it was released. Hulse thinks that such story depicts Belize as a backward place. Well, the Minister’s remarks have incensed COLA. President, Giovanni Brackett says that if the comment wasn’t so serious and about such a serious issue it would be funny. But instead, says Brackett, it’s just bizarre.

Geovanni Brackett, President, COLA

“It’s not the first time we heard this Minister make these kinds of alarming comments, it seems now that since he is on the political team that he is one of the best team player. I tell you I play basketball and if he was on my team I would love it because we could do no wrong, no foil, time would run out, even when the clock runs out and you shoot the clock ten seconds after counts because he is a real good team player. He is one of the best team players of all time better than Michael Jordan, better than Tim Duncan he is a po9litical team player and his comments against the media is very disturbing, He is accusing the media of having this story being internationalized with the rat in the incubator. But I want to inform the minster you can’t sensor the media, the media is not there to decide which stories are going to be big and which stories are not going to be big. The media is just there to mediate and to facilitate the stories between different entities. Some stories get a lot of publicity and other stories don’t have the kind of attraction. Coincidentally somehow maybe divine providence has it, that the world saw and believe that a rat in a n incubator is a very serious one. But according to the minister rats and rodents have been there from thy kingdom come. So he doesn’t see the rational as to why it had gotten such attention. But the world if you would look on YouTube Mike, so many hits have been on YouTube. Thousands of thousands upon thousands hits now what the minister is saying is that all those hits are meaningless. Why are you all checking it out, a baby being bitten by a rat isn’t a serious issue, that is what he is basically saying, So the parents of this child should not be worried even if it had gotten  a little disease, it wouldn’t have been anything big. The Minister needs to retract his comment.”