Nat’l Security C.E.O. Points Finger at Leadership

George Lovell

RESTORE Belize was also discussed in a different forum today. C.E.O. George Lovell says that its structure is good, but it cannot be effective without good leadership. At a conference to dissect masculinity and violence, the C.E.O. of National Security spoke on the effectiveness of groups targeting crime. Lovell didn’t hold back; he says that there have been challenges in getting the right work done through these organizations.

George Lovell, C.E.O., Ministry of National Security

“We note that since 2008, there has been a structure for Restore Belize but we see where too many people are involved and it is normally the same set of people in too many meetings. So, while we seek to put into place a number of the things that were studied and decided upon, we found it challenging to get these things done simply because our people were too busy. So, this is one of the things that I would want to ask that you try and see ways how we do not have as many meetings with the same set of people meeting discussing the same set of things. The achievement of the task that was set out in a number of these planned programmes were too drawn out and often frustrates the achievement of these things that we wanted to achieve because of the bureaucracy that we have within the government systems. There are the still the need for better coordination and allocation of resources to the programme goals and objectives under the various citizens programme. What I note is that a number of engines, although they are all working towards the same goal, act in isolation and we need better coordination.  We need to get the various entities to support and find the over-arching goals of the Horizon 2030 with individual recurrent budget coming towards or being placed towards the goals and objectives. A number of ministries, in my mind, even though they want to support because of the limited budget that they have quite often do not bring their budget to bear on this particular issue. Lastly, having the right people to lead and follow through on planned activities continue to be a challenge. We start these things and if you don’t have the right people there to help it go forward, it doesn’t go anywhere. I believe that the Restore Belize structure is great but it cannot, in my mind, work if we do not have the right people leading the issue.”