Mayor Darrell Bradley gives an update on payments to Belize Waste Control

Darrell Bradley

Belize City Mayor Darrell Bradley hosted a press conference this morning during which he updated the media on three major projects that are being concluded for 2013.  Those initiatives include the construction of streets, as well as the rehabilitation of B.T.L. Park.  Mayor Bradley also commented on payments being made to Belize Waste Control for citywide sanitation for which he says the council is diligently working to reduce the amount owed to the company for garbage collection, a figure that was once two point four million dollars.

Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor

“The problems that we have with the sanitation contractors are systematic and structural.  The paying off of a judgment debt and the bringing of our accounts with them to a zero balance does not solve the problem.  We have major problems with them chiefly that the cost for sanitation services to Belize City is too high.  We’re paying forty-five cents out of every dollar to pick up garbage and to clean Belize City.  That is unsustainable and that system will come to a grinding halt and a crash because it continues to be a bleed on Belize City.  You are asking me these questions, you are asking me these same questions last year.  I guarantee you that come December of this coming year you will be right back here asking me these same problems.  We are paying off a debt but really what we’re doing is that we are putting a band-aid on a volcano.  This is a major situation and the reality is that the city is saddled by these contracts and the only way to have a solution is to get out of these contracts. The reality is that we will make good on our commitments to them.  Two or three weeks ago they were saying that it was fifteen weeks, they are now at nine weeks.  That is an improvement.  They will be by the first week in January at eight weeks.  We are going down in our debt to them.  We owe them two point four million dollars, they agreed to a one million dollar write-off so we’re then at one point four, one point two million dollars in relation to them.  We have paid that off.”