Mayor Bradley says Belize Waste Control to drop court action
Darrell Bradley
When we last spoke to Mayor Darrell Bradley, he had just come out of court after a litigation hearing brought by sanitation company, Belize Waste Control. BWC is suing City Hall for arrears in sanitation payments, which were behind as much as four months late last year. The Mayor was back in court last Friday for another bout of litigation, but he told News Five today that he has been assured that BWC will drop its court action, since City Hall has been making every effort to pay, and BWC recognizes the effort.
Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor
“At this present moment, we are between five and six weeks in areas—we’ve brought it down from fifteen to five and six. So we had a hearing late last week in relation to dealing with this matter. The matter came before the court and what transpired is that we indicated certain things to the judge. We admitted the arrears that we owed which was five to six weeks, but the contract lawfully provides that we could be in four weeks arrears without breach. So that what we are saying is that all they are legally entitle to sue for is between one and two weeks—depending on when we pay, it is right now between one and two weeks which is fifty-one thousand dollars or a hundred and two dollars. And I just signed a cheque this morning for them for fifty-one thousand and we are making a double payment to them sometime mid next week or sometime very close and that will bring us under the four weeks arrears so that we will be out of the clear with them. I’d indicated this though previously that this is a pyrrhic victory. We have in a sense come out of a battle, but we still have the war. The reality is that this is a perennial problem for the City Council and it represents too much of a leach or a drain on the revenues. That forty-five cents that out of every dollar we pay for sanitation services so that I in a sense would look forward into the future and I could forecast that come September, you Mike would likely be at this same place asking me about arrears again with the sanitation services. The reality is that it cost us too much. We have in a sense solved it for this year and I think, and may say this; that they seem to be satisfied because where we left it on Friday. The sides agreed to settle the matter and they said that they would discontinue the claim against the City Council because they were satisfied that we were making good-faith payments and that we would continue to make these payments.”
BWC is only one of the sanitation companies. There is another, Belize Maintenance Limited, and City Hall is in arrears to that company as well. In Friday’s newscast we’ll get an update from Mayor Bradley on his plans for BML.
