That brings us to the industry bottom-line, which is that for all stake-holders from factory to field, the crop season needs to get underway. And it can, according to those we spoke to this afternoon. They state that the Sugar Industry Control Board, government’s player in the industry, has the authority and the obligation to […]
The final proposal for a purchasing agreement between the B.S.C.F.A. and B.S.I. remains to be endorsed, despite an amendment to a controversial term in a previous draft. Earlier this week, Chief Financial Officer Belizario Carballo expressed serious concerns about the National Trade Union Congress of Belize’s involvement in ongoing negotiations between the two parties. The […]
As we mentioned earlier, the N.T.U.C.B.’s role in the current process has been met with questions from B.S.I. concerning its agenda. While he did not speak openly, Carballo alluded to an interview last Friday in which the N.T.U.C.B. representative was purportedly misinformed of the facts of the matter pertaining to the purchasing agreement. Belizario […]
CARSI, the Central American Regional Security Initiative, is a program particularly designed to help create a more responsive police force, enhance public police cooperation, improve the judicial sector, modernize correctional facilities, and to assist with anti-gang programs with a focus on youth at risk. Today the media was invited to witness the presentation of a […]
The crime statistics for 2014 are out – well, not exactly because 2014 isn’t done yet and all those figures are subject to change. But at the request of the media, there is an interim stat sheet. We won’t look in-depth at all the figures until the end of the year, but we did take […]
At least by our unofficial stats, murders in Belize City have gone way down, which is good news. But murders in the districts have gone up, which is bad news. And it gets worse. Murders in the city, particularly due to gang violence, can be addressed, and have been addressed, proactively. But many of the […]
There was a traffic accident just before eleven this morning on Princess Margaret Drive near its intersection with A Street in the King’s Park Area. Twenty-five year old David Gonzalez, an employee of Home Protector Insurance Company Limited, was running errands for the company when he slammed into a Toyota Hilux registered to the Guatemalan […]
On Tuesday morning, shortly before three o’clock, the body of twenty-year-old Juan Menjivar was discovered by police in an area between miles forty-two and forty-three on the Southern Highway, in the vicinity of the Monkey River Junction. Menjivar, a resident of Water Side Area in Independence Village, was observed in an unconscious state lying in […]
Tonight, the dispute between the B.S.C.F.A. and ASR/B.S.I. remains unresolved. The breakdown in negotiations comes after a long and hard fought agreement in principle by both parties, and from all accounts the bad guy in this scenario is B.S.I. Still, in the past days there have been attempts to bridge the gap caused by a […]
PM Barrow says that in the face of what was happening on the ground, backed up by the Memorandum of Understanding, the new wording introduced by B.S.I. completely bypassed what was in effect the accepted protocol. So in that regard, said the Prime Minister, the B.S.C.F.A.’s alarm and hesitation in signing the agreement was quite […]
We can conclude however, that perhaps the PM was being a wee bit too optimistic in his hope that the directors would sign off on the agreement today. That’s not going to happen because the directors won’t be meeting until tomorrow…and even then it’s unlikely the agreement would be signed because some directors have called […]
The by-laws of the B.S.C.F.A. allows for directors to call together an emergency session of the general assembly, and it will be done though a date has not been decided. That’s not considered good news for any one of the stakeholders who actually want to see the crop season started immediately because however it works […]
Late last week, the government of Belize received terrible news from an arbitration panel of three in Costa Rica. That panel declared that G.O.B. must pay British Caribbean Bank forty-one point seven million U.S. dollars. In addition, attorneys for B.C.B. claim that the decision of the tribunal is final and binding, and government must pay […]
And while the government is quite willing to assume the role of ‘malpago’ where the Ashcroft Group is concerned, it’s taking a lot of heat where a long delayed payment for Janae Matute is concerned. Janae is the inspirational young second form student who was born with cerebral palsy, attributed to medical error. Way back […]
Twenty-seven-year-old Roy Bennett has been convicted of possession of a controlled drug after pleading guilty to possession of point nine grams of marijuana. With less than two days away from Christmas, Bennett, the father of a three-month-old baby girl will spend the holidays, as well as the next nine months in prison. On Monday, […]
There are two murders to report tonight, both of them in western Belize. The first happened, it is believed, sometime early Saturday morning, on the More Tomorrow road outside of Belmopan. One man was viciously stabbed to death and left in the bushes on the side of the road to be discovered later that morning. […]
The second murder was a particularly bloody one, as a Guatemalan labourer was stabbed to death on the remote More Tomorrow Road. It happened sometime in the early hours of Saturday morning, when it is believed that twenty-two year old Juan Alberto Guerra Ramirez was socializing with other persons at a bar nearby when there […]
On Friday, we reported that the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association had refused to endorse a purchasing agreement with Belize Sugar Industries Limited under the premise that B.S.I. had introduced articles which were outside of the extent of the initial agreement. While B.S.I. has since argued the point that as purchaser the company reserves the […]
Now that the contentious item has been cleared from the contract Carballo says a response, as well as a signature from B.S.C.F.A. is imminent. The next step, he says, would be to discuss and finalize a starting date for the sugar crop. Belizario Carballo, Financial Controller, B.S.I. “We expect to have an agreement as […]
While B.S.I. remains optimistic that a response from B.S.C.F.A. is forthcoming, up to news time tonight the agreement had not been endorsed. The effect of the delay of the sugar crop, says Carballo, will only be known towards the end of the season in May 2015. Belizario Carballo, Financial Controller, B.S.I. “The response is […]
A Ladyville family lost all their belongings and the place they called home to a fire on Saturday evening. While it was initially believed to be a case of arson, an official investigation by the National Fire Service has since dispelled claims that the fire was intentionally set. News Five’s Duane Moody has the following […]
Separate road traffic accidents on the Phillip Goldson Highway have left one person dead and several others injured. A fatal accident on Saturday between Douglas and San Juan villages in the Orange Walk District claimed the life of a sixty-two-year-old farmer of Douglas. Initial Investigations reveal that Fermin Gonzalez was hit by a pickup driven […]
The Government of Belize will have to cough up the huge sum of nearly one hundred million dollars following the long awaited decision of an international Treaty Tribunal. Today, the Treaty Tribunal handed down its decision in the case of the British Caribbean Bank and the Government of Belize. The arbitration held in Costa Rica earlier […]
The government today issued a lengthy release attempting to explain the significant award to the BCB. While the government is admitting that it has responsibility to pay, the release goes on to argue that somehow it is Telemedia who should be paying. But today’s tribunal decision makes it clear that it is the Government of […]
Tonight, the sugar industry is in a serious state of limbo, and tensions in the north are rising. The B.S.C.F.A. has refused to sign onto the purchasing agreement, the N.T.U.C.B. has jumped into the fray and B.S.I. is putting security protocols in place in anticipation of a protest. So how did we get to this […]
