Leader of the Opposition opposes CitCo bylaws motion
Those comments of course brought swift responses from the U.D.P., who say that the P.U.P.s are the last ones who should talk about propriety in the city council.
Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“I am very pleased for the opposition, I am very in fact enthralled by the fact that you actually have the member for Freetown, old guard, supporting the new guard and agreeing with what it is that he says. I am not too sure this new show of solidarity will last very long, especially in the case of the member for Freetown when he learns that Jorge Espat, sponsored by the new guard, is coming after his seat. But for as long as this shotgun marriage lasts, let us compliment them…”
Patrick Faber, Area Rep., Collet
“The comments made by the leader of the opposition are bordering ridiculous. We are trying to normalize something. It is understood that businesses have to pay for the collection of their garbage; that is understood. So as it is right now, as I understand it, what is the case is there is a contract with the Belize Waste Control that gives them the exclusive right to collect this commercial garbage but that private businesses must pay them directly. The situation is that some private businesses, however small they are, are taking matters into their own hands and are not paying the monies, are using Belize Waste
Control and are going contrary to the law. They are using different people and creating a problem because they are trying to get rid of their garbage in any way. And the Opposition, Mr. Speaker, is the body that quick to point out that the city is dirty.”
Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“This is no tax on the residents of Belize City… there is a distinction between—if the Leader of the Opposition and his merry men don’t yet recognize it—between residential and commercial garbage. Now this speaks only to the collection of commercial garbage. Unlike the situation in every other district town, because when those on the other side were in the government, they introduced bylaws to impose fees on the residents of every other municipality fort he collection of residential garbage. All this does is to put on a proper footing the fees that they already are supposed to be paying. And this goes together with the earlier act that we passed to amend the trade licensing law in order to provide for the City Council to be able to enforce this collection. If these people don’t pay, they will have their trade licenses suspended. Now this is not any kind of surplus funds for the City Council; these monies are going to pass through the City Council directly to the contractor. They are the ones that in every single municipality imposed the most onerous, outrageous garbage collection contracts by way of sweetheart deals with their party insiders. The central government just had to pay a boatload of money to get out of the one with Cox who ran for the Belize City Council, who is known P.U.P. insider, and who was given some sixteen year I believe garbage collection contract by the P.U.P. Central Government at, as I said, the most outrageous rates imaginable. They did the same thing in Orange Walk. You come talking about what will happen on March fourth, man you think anybody has forgotten? You talk about the difficulties that the U.D.P. City Council encounter? Difficulties caused by the fact that you left something like a ten million dollars debt. You want to talk about coming back and asking people to vote for your City Council candidates? What you think, that people have developed some kind of collective amnesia?”
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