Japan Gifts a New Compactor to Belmopan City Council

Representatives from the Government of Japan were in Belmopan today for the official handing over of a much needed garbage collecting truck. Mayor Khalid Belisle received the compactor on behalf of the Belmopan City Council. The mayor says that it took a little over two years to secure the vehicle which will transport garbage to transfer stations. Here is News Five’s Isani Cayetano.

Isani Cayetano, Reporting

The keys to a new compactor were handed over to the Belmopan City Council this morning as a donation from the government and people of Japan.  The garbage truck will be used to collect discarded waste in the outlying communities of Belmopan.  It comes a little over two years following a request from Mayor Khalid Belisle.

Khalid Belisle, Belmopan Mayor

Khalid Belisle

“We started this process back in late March, early April in 2017, so here we are two and a half years later and glad to be here of course.  I found out about this Grassroots Human Security Project via another donation that was made here in Belmopan, that was a computer lab to one of our local high schools and we figured, “Hey, what the heck.  Nothing beats a try.”  And so we started that process of applying and eventually found out that we had qualified for the project, but we had to iron out some wrinkles along the way because of course with grants and grant funding they will make sure that every penny is spent properly.  And so we finally managed to secure the truck, order the truck and then it took a couple months to get it shipped into Belize.”

Isani Cayetano

“Is it that the Belmopan City Council may have been facing issues with garbage collection as to why this became an important part of the move towards securing this particular vehicle?”

Khalid Belisle

“Only in the respect that garbage collection isn’t exactly on level footing citywide, as I said earlier.”

Charge d’Affaires Hiroyuki Kubota of the Embassy of Japan in Belize was on hand to deliver the keys to the sanitation vehicle valued at a hundred and seventy-five thousand Belize dollars.

Hiroyuki Kubota

Hiroyuki Kubota, Charge d’Affaires, Japanese Embassy

“The proposal, the interim proposal was prepared by one of the staff members of the Belmopan City Council who was a participant to the JIICA technical training for the waste management in Caribbean regions.  If I remember correctly [that was in] 2014.  Then the application was made first in 2017 and we sent back a response to improve the proposal and this is the product of that long process.”

According to Mayor Khalid Belisle, the addition of the new garbage truck will greatly assist in the transportation of waste to the upcoming transfer station, since carrying garbage to the existing dumpsite posed a challenge to the sanitation department.

Khalid Belisle

“We’re just looking forward to the impact it will have on the city, like I outlined our operations in terms of expanding our services into other areas.  The cleanliness, like I said, we pride ourselves on keeping Belmopan clean, but also the impact on the environment.  We’ve had issues in the past where we’re using the open-back trucks and with garbage spilling out and the like, both within the city as well as on the highway as we move our waste dump to the current waste site soon to be transfer station.  And so, we just genuinely believe that this truck will assist us in our operations but also in keeping our city clean on a whole.”

Isani Cayetano reporting for News Five.