Sister city relations with Chetumal re-affirmed
A little over a year ago Belize established a sister city relationship with Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico. Today the
Belize City Council and representatives from Mexico met for a special sitting at City Hall. They signed several agreements made last May when the relationship was declared. These include promoting trade between the two cities, technical cooperation and assistance for health, disaster preparedness and assistance for the city engineer, evaluation and the Public Works Departments. According to Councilor Merilyn Young who is in charge of the sister city relationship and Mexican Ambassador to Belize Enrique Hubbard Urrea, both cities have benefited from the relationship and stand to gain a lot more from the exchange of ideas and experiences.
Merilyn Young, Councilor, CITCO
“We have had our Sanitation and Traffic Department visit their municipality to look at what they are doing and to see if we can learn anything from them with respect to traffic. We have looked at some of the systems they have with respect to training that we will be signing on today as to accommodate our traffic officers with some training from their municipality.”
Enrique Hubbard Urrea, Mexican Ambassador to Belize
“So just by getting together and sharing ideas and experiences and finding out how you approach the problems and how you solve them, there is really a benefit. But besides that we were already very close. The cooperation between the two cities was already happening but with a formal framework in which you can create more agreements and arrangements for cooperation. You have a better infrastructure to build from; there are other cooperation aspects. Not only with Belize City. We are talking about, for instance taking advantage of some of the experiences in the way you deal with youth, especially youths that become unstable and inclined to commit some kind of illicit activity. This is something we all share; we all have this problem but we do not all have the experience to deal with it.”
Signing on behalf of Chetumal was the Mayor, Ovando Martinez and for Belize, Mayor David Fonseca.
In related news, the Mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana has invited Mayor Fonseca and a small delegation to come to New Orleans to establish a sister city relationship there. That signing will take place in March, 2000.
