Prime Minister tours affected areas
The Prime Minister Said Musa returned today after a week long visit to Taiwan with the Minister for Budget and Planning Ralph Fonseca. Although he was far from home during the Mitch crisis the Prime Minister was constantly updated on what was happening in Belize. Today, just minutes after he touched down at the P.G.I.A. Prime Minister Musa boarded a B.D.F. Defender to fly over the cayes and other affected areas of the country to see the situation for himself. He then led a motorcade through the low-lying areas of Belize City, stopping at the Southern Foreshore for a news conference. He discussed the plan of action for dealing with the damage, Belize’s assistance to our Central American neighbors and of course, the positive results of his tour to Taiwan.
Said Musa, Prime Minister
“Clearly we’ve had an excessive amount of rainfall, I understand it’s about nineteen inches over the past week and it’s clearly showing up that our drainage system in the city is very poor. There’s a lot of work to be done in the repair of streets and in the countryside to bridges and in San Pedro of course the piers. A lot of infrastructural repairs will have to be carried out. We have suffered a lot of loss, no doubt about it, from the floods, and tomorrow in Cabinet we’ll be sitting down to finalize plans to carry out our infrastructural repair program.”
Q: “You’ve seen what happened in neighboring Honduras and Nicaragua, will Belize be liaising with those countries to advance any relief efforts?”
Said Musa
“Yes in fact, we have already been in touch to assist both Honduras and Nicaragua. We had to co-sponsor a resolution in the United Nations to alert the entire international community and I believe that a relief effort has already started by the private sector here at home and government will be joining in that. I understand for instance the Northern Fishermen’s Cooperative have sent two vessels with rations to assist them in Honduras. And the B.D.F. will be assisting as well.”
Q: “You weren’t with us physically but I’m sure you were being kept abreast of the situation. What was communication like with your team?”
Said Musa
“I was in constant touch with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Cabinet on a daily basis. In fact at times on an hourly basis, when the situation was very critical on Wednesday and Thursday. Of course it was very nerve wrecking for me being so far away, but I felt very confident that we had very competent ministers here at home to take care of business.”
Q: “Can you evaluate the performance of your deputy?”
Said Musa
“From all the reports I got he performed exceedingly well.”
Q: “Mr. Musa, tell us now about your trip to Taiwan. It was a working visit, what was the result of that trip?”
Said Musa
“Yes, it was a working visit. Minister Fonseca and myself, Ambassador William Quinto as well went along with us. Out of the visit, we met with the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, Vice President, the Foreign Minister, and other government officials. We worked out a five-year economic cooperation program between the Republic of China and Belize.
Essentially the highlights are, assistance with our debt restructuring, a hundred million dollar housing program over the five year period and also technical and material assistance for the reactivation of the Libertad Sugar Factory. Also we signed an agreement to trigger in the soft loans for the small business and medium size business. There was an eight million U.S. balance. Two million had already been advanced to the outgoing government. It was ten million U.S. agreement and we signed off to get that remaining eight million U.S.”
Q: “In view of the flooding that we’ve seen, any alterations to the housing project or recommendations to avoid future problems?”
Said Musa
“Well it clearly underscores our plan, that there’s clearly a need for a new satellite city other than continuous building in Belize City. That’s what I understand the Minister of Housing has been concentrating on — for us to design a well planned city on the suburbs whether it be in the Boom/Hattieville area or mile eight. Certainly we’ll be planning these satellite towns well planned with necessary infrastructure: with proper electricity, drainage, water, telephone. The whole infrastructural needs would be catered for in these new suburban developments.”
Q: “Mr. Musa you’ve seen personally the flooded areas, the damage in San Pedro, Caye Caulker and here in Belize City. What are the reports you’ve been getting from other areas of the country?”
Said Musa
“Basically the flooding has been affecting our agricultural crops and we’re waiting an assessment of that. We should be getting a report from the Minister of Agriculture tomorrow in Cabinet. We spoke to him a while ago in the vehicle but he wasn’t able to give us a full, detailed report yet. But that is coming in and of course that will be an area that we will be concentrating on because that is very important to us.
Of course we will have to give some assistance to the hoteliers and the tourist people out in San Pedro because as you know the tourist season is only one month away and incidentally before I left Taiwan we were able to secure an agreement from that government to advance certain sums of money to assist in immediate rehabilitation work because of the flooding in the wake of Hurricane Mitch.”
Q: “What were the key areas of weakness that were encountered in the storm?”
Said Musa
“I think clearly the hurricane shelters, we need a lot of improvement there. Also I gather that there was weaknesses in the health system. The Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital is only designed for a category three hurricane and this was a category five. The food distribution system would clearly have to improve.
The whole exercise has been very useful, if I can put it that way, from the point of showing us the areas that we need to improve upon from the National Emergency Management Team. But by and large I have to congratulate the deputy Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Minister of National Security, the Attorney General, everybody who really pulled their weight in seeing us through this very difficult period.
And I am told that the Belizean people exercised a lot of restraint and understanding throughout this whole thing and responded to the call to evacuate and this kind of thing which is very good. Many countries suffered and Honduras is a classic example where they suffered a lot of unnecessary loss because the people either were not properly informed or did not respond to the call when they were asked to evacuate. I don’t think that has been a problem for Belize City, certainly for the country of Belize.”
Q: “Any words to the people that you want to express at this point?”
Said Musa
“I am glad to be back home and of course we have a lot of work ahead of us and we begin this work tomorrow in Cabinet. It’s great to be back home, thank you.”
