BWC to receive payment from CitCo; debt down to 10 weeks
Darrell Bradley
While City Hall’s street woes inhibit Christmas cheer, there has been an attempt to deal with the sanitation company crisis. In early December, the Council was behind in payments to Belize Waste Control to the tune of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That’s four months worth of arrears, and BWC was at the point of closing up shop pending payment. To send the point clearly, the sanitation company started operating a skeleton staff. Today Mayor Darrell Bradley told News Five that the arrears have been brought down to ten weeks, and he hopes to clear it by mid-February. And not only that, but City Hall will be making a huge payment to BWC on Friday to clear off a long outstanding debt.
Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor
“Earlier…this would have been late November…we made three payments to them. And last week we made a double payment to them and this morning I just signed a check for another double payment so that we are bringing the arrears down to a reasonably acceptable limit by my count so that we should now be at ten weeks. So that they had complained previously that we were at fifteen weeks so we’re bringing it down to ten. We are ensuring that we can make at least one or two more double payments before the end of this year which should be next week. And then what we will do is that in January we would make double payments and triple payments so that we can at least meet them and break even at a reasonable time. Last year we broke even at around March. We are hoping that we can break even around the middle of February. It’s a worrisome condition. I don’t like to be in debt. On Friday, which is something that is causing me headaches, but Friday which is the twentieth of December also we have to pay them six hundred and twenty thousand dollars which is the second payment of the judgment that we had negotiated with them about a million dollar write-off. We have paid half of the judgment in June – that was six hundred and twenty thousand – now we balance them six hundred and twenty thousand which is supposed to be paid December twentieth. We have to make that payment.”
According to Mayor Bradley, he is also making payments to Belize Maintenance Limited, and signed a check for them this morning. According to Bradley, he has a little more leeway with BML because they are a little less boisterous.
