New Bills introduced in House
The House of Representatives last met in July, so when that body convened in Belmopan this morning there was no shortage of legislation to be moved along. Ann-Marie reports from Independence Hill.
Ann-Marie Williams, Reporting
House Speaker Silvia Flores called the Lower House to order at 10:10 this morning with the National Prayer. That gave way to the usual proceedings?Bills brought from the Senate, petitions and papers, followed by presentation of reports from various committees.
As the morning wore on a number of bills were introduced among them, a bill to make the administration of land more efficient.
Johnny Briceno, Min. of Natural Resources
“I rise to introduce a Bill for an Act to amend the National Lands Act of No. 6 of 1992 to provide for the issuing of enforcement notices and cessation orders in the administration of the Act; to regulate the manner in which the title to an estate in national lands may vest in an alien; and to provide to matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.”
Ralph Fonseca, Min. of Budget Management
“Madam Speaker I rise to introduce a Bill for an Act to provide for the imposition and collection of an environmental tax on plastic bottles, containers and other packaging materials made of plastic imported into Belize and to provide for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.”
Women’s Affair’s Minister Dolores Balderamos-Garcia presented two Bills amending the ways marital unions are treated by the law. Balderamos-Garcia says the amendments will cure an injustice that has been done to people who live in common-law union. For example when one of the partners dies without leaving a will, the other partner finds him or herself literally without a roof overhead.
Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Min. of Women’s Affairs
“So that if the other spouse dies, or the union breaks up there can be inheritance. The other Act, which is the Amendment to the Supreme Court of Judicature Act, provides several things: property rights, maintenance, as well as the inheritance. I?d like to take this opportunity to define the common law union. It is two persons, a man and a woman, living together in an established union for a minimum of five years. They are not married to each other, but not married to anybody else either. We are respecting the common law union, but we also have to respect marriage, so this Act definitely not take into account where you have a person in a relationship, but then they have what we would call in Belize an outside partner.”
As usual, there was no shortage of representatives getting at each other’s throats.
Dean Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
“Will the Minister of Education say what was the final cost at which the Sadie Vernon High School was constructed and by how much that final cost exceeded the figure at which the contract was originally awarded to his cousin Bill Lindo?”
Cordel Hyde, Minister of Education
“The contract cost of constructing the Sadie Vernon High School building compares favourably with the cost of school buildings construction, under the Primary Education Project, which was financed by the World Bank, that administrated for five years and two months by the last government. In that project a nine-classroom building was routinely constructed for over five hundred thousand dollars. The nine-classroom buildings under the World Bank project were only fifty-four hundred square feet in size compared to the sixty-six hundred square feet of the Sadie Vernon High School. It is also instructive to note Madam Speaker that after Hurricane Keith Nazarene High School estimated its damages from the hurricane at ninety-six thousand, three hundred dollars. St. Catherine?s Academy suffered damages totaling forty-four thousand, eighty-one dollars and fifty cents. St. John?s Anglican School, I may add, which is situated on Euphrates Avenue in the Queen?s Square constituency and which was extensively renovated just before the last election to the tune of one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars, suffered hurricane damages of thirty thousand dollars.?
?By comparison, according to the well-known principal of Sadie Vernon High School, in a written correspondence to the Ministry of Education, the school only suffered damages totaling two hundred and eighty-five dollars. Of that, one hundred and thirty-five was to replace a red and black Tornado sixteen inch standing fan and one hundred and fifty to clean the building left in a ?deplorable state.? In the end Madam Speaker, Lake-I residents know that they now have a beautiful school building and a progressive secondary school to call their own; before August 1998 they didn?t.”
Dean Barrow
?Will the minister say whether it is true that the building leaked terribly during the hurricane and was completely flooded??
Cordel Hyde
?If you were listening, you would have heard me say the damages cause by the hurricane totaled two hundred and eighty-five dollars, as compared to the school renovated under his stewardship just before the 1998 elections, which suffered damages to the tune of thirty-thousand dollars; I think that speaks for itself.”
The House of Representatives adjourned shortly after two this afternoon for the Christmas holidays.
Ann-Marie Williams For News 5.
