P.U.P. senator Collet Montejo says Cayo has the highest unemployment rate
Collet Montejo
P.U.P. Senator Collet Montejo echoed similar sentiments regarding joblessness and the overall dismal state of Belize’s economy during his presentation. The budget, Montejo says, offers nothing to the youth population, instead it seeks to further plunge an already embattled middle class into abject poverty.
Collet Montejo, P.U.P. Senator
“As our good colleague for the business sector indicated, we would have to create X-amount of jobs, forty jobs daily to begin to even catch up on what we’ve already lost. It offers no hope to the people of the Cayo District which currently and regrettably has the highest rate of unemployment in this country at twenty-two point six percent of our workforce. No hope or relief to the middle class who daily face higher costs of living in the face of ever increasing rates of inflation, a middle class Mr. President, that is rapidly eroding where more and more of us are at the very edge of poverty, and some of us have even fallen below the poverty line. It offers no hope to our young people who are graduating with their degrees and not being able to find jobs to meet their qualifications, or our farmers, our teachers, our police officers, our public officers nor to many within the business community. It is no wonder Mr. President that the vast majority of Belizeans feel like the sky is truly falling, why multiple thousands of our people are saying that these are the toughest and worst of times. It has never been this bad is the cry of so many in our country today.”
When we left the chambers, the Minister of Energy and Petroleum, Senator Joy Grant, was about to make her debut presentation.
This deficit budget does offer something to the youth: they will be enslaved into paying off the majority of the increasing debt through their entire working lives. How does that feel, to begin adult life with an anchor of debt chained around your neck?
DEFICIT BUDGETS ARE AN IMMORAL THEFT FROM FUTURE WORKERS — a new kind of “taxation without representation.”
Unu deserve it especially all the idiots that voted for the udp I keep telling you this is the worse pm and gov. In the history of this country and while barrow the supposed leader of the country is in Miami again more people are dying in the country due to murder and a lack of leadership this ya tha one sorry pm and gov.
As a small businessman in the City my worst time was when UDP introduced the VAT which killed all the small business. From there on I knew I was’nt going to be living in Belize under these condition. My business suffered and people suffered under the UDP. Just cannot understand why they got voted back into office. BIG MISTAKE
They were not voted in, they stole the election. It gall us to hear them saying they were given a mandate when we know it’s not true. Busing people to vote, in areas they don’t live or work, and registering them with fictitious addresses and giving people citizenship, voters card, and land, all at the same time, are only a few ways they stole the election. Despite all this, the margin was small. If Mark and Cordel, didn’t step out only weeks before the election, the result would have been totally different. We don’t want to hear that super bond is killing us. They knew it was there before they took over the reign in 2008, but told us they could do better. Then the moment they got into office, the policies they adopted frightened away the investors. Who… in their right mind will invest money, if they don’t have confidence in the government to keep their investment safe, or knowing that their investment can be taken with no idea that you will be recompensed. They closed down the project behind customs that had hundreds of truckers working, and lot more jobs for housing contractors, jobs for hundreds of people from south side Belize city. Then they took BTL, and later BEL, whom we haven’t paid a dime yet. No one was safe, even Archie’s fell under the UDP hammer. To further compound our problem, they attacked a bank that has representation country wide. With luck it didn’t fold! Investors saw the kind of Government we voted in, and it scared them away. All we had to do was grow the economy by four percent and there would have been no need to worry about the super bond. But by frightening off the investors, investment dropped from 225 million dollars to a measly 12 million dollars in this country. We are feeling the pinch of that drop! Every year more than five hundred students leave school, so over a five year period we are looking at over twenty five thousand more young people without jobs, and without hope! We will reap what we sow! ‘More SUFFERING!’
Fellow Belizeans, i call upon you to close down the country. Don’t go to work; don’t buy gasoline; close all the stores; close down the government; close down the schools; strike! Strike!! STRIKE!!! This will be the only way we will get the attention of government. Once we start, there is no turning back; and we must militate until Barrow caves in to our demands. CLOSE DOWN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY!!!!
I hope that he’s being misquoted. In Belizean Parliament you address your questions through the Speaker of the House not Mr. President.
Rod, we didn’t give the mandate to them, they stole it by illegal registration of newly nationalized immigrants into areas where they neither live or work. If Mark and Cordel didn’t step down, weeks before election we would have had the gov people wanted. This gov started on the wrong foot, and we are now sinking deeper, because they have no policy to protect your investment. In truth, no one who has money will invest in a country where they can take your investment with no guarantee that you will be recompensed!