BELIZE CITY, Tues. Aug. 24, 2021– The chairman of the board of Belize Telemedia Limited (BTL), Mark Lizarraga, has finally commented on the switch to SMART services that has taken place in a number of GoB ministries, and the tone of the former senator, who railed for years in the Senate against every act of corruption by the UDP administration, was surprisingly subdued.
During a press conference held on Wednesday, Lizarraga echoed Prime Minister Hon. John Briceño’s justification of the move — referring to the “inefficiencies” at BTL that he said must be addressed and citing the need for government to cut costs. He said that BTL is operating in a competitive environment and must strengthen their internal teams who deal with larger clients such as the GoB.
Lizarraga discussed the cost issues that the company had been facing under previous management:
“Sometimes we may be a little more expensive in our services, but I bring these things to your attention to say that ‘look, these things have a cost and we need to make a profit’. No. We cannot expect to be subsidised anymore, and we cannot expect that the Government of Belize is going to continue to bail us out. As the Prime Minister rightfully said, the previous Government we know paid way too much to this company. Way too much. And as well, our company today still carries some $60 million in long-term debt, which we began to service, this year … When it came to the company, we found that there were some dividends outstanding to the GOB for some $21 million. The previous government had declared dividends and had not disbursed,” he said.
Lizarraga went on to inform the public that the company is now seeing an increase in profit compared to what was reported last year. When asked if he sided with the BTL staff and members of the Belize Communications Workers Union in their condemnation of the PM’s seemingly nepotistic actions, these were his remarks:
“I’ve said this to our staff, we have a new system in place now. We have quarterly town hall meetings where I meet with all the staff members of BTL, virtually of course. And I explained and expressed to them what the present situation of the company is. And we knew from day one that BTL was heavy. We knew from day one that we had to make some changes to put the company on profitable footing. And we also knew that we had to become nimbler — more responsive to our clients’ needs. We had to become competitive. And our staff, after consultations with the unions and the whole staff body, understood this. I can understand their passion. Obviously, I carry a bias. I would want to see all the business come to us, of course. But I started by saying we are operating in a competitive arena. And we have to be prepared, even though we are an essential services provider, to compete with the other players in the arena. So, our staff may not like it, but they know it. BTL needs to become lean. BTL needs to become nimble. And we need to be responsive to the demands of the marketplace. That is what happens in competition. We’re not different.”
He then went on to state, as had been mentioned by Prime Minister Briceño, that BTL had made presentations both to Cabinet and the CEO caucus of the government, but he did not outline what the nature of the bidding process was — whether BTL was really given an opportunity to accommodate the needs of the government and to present an offer that was lower than SMART’s. The company’s chief executive officer, Ivan Tesucum, had publicly stated that BTL had not really been given that opportunity, and it would not be possible for the BTL chairman to refute the statement of the CEO, because, when those purported presentations took place, Lizarraga was reportedly on personal leave.
And thus, when questioned about the nature of the presentations, he said he was “not aware of the details”. He could only say, “… I believe that BTL had a presentation at the CEO level where they made, basically we introduced ourselves to the CEO caucus and told them what our services were, etc, I’m not aware of the details of that, but yes we did have two presentations, one to Cabinet, and one to the CEO caucus.” In regard to the presentation to the Cabinet, he said that the purpose of the presentation was to “bring it up to date as to where we were, what we were doing and what we could do to grow with them to help them.” Nonetheless, despite not being aware of the details, he asserted, “Obviously if we had made them an offer that was more palatable or appeasing to them, they would have taken it. So we have to go back to the drawing board and we have to see, and I’ve not had those meetings as yet, but it helps us. It challenges us and it helps us to take a look at ourselves to see where we can improve and see how we can be more aggressive and more competitive.”
During the conference, Mr. Lizarraga was also asked how much BTL has now lost in contract revenue and whether he believes the company will lose further contracts with other GoB ministries. He replied that he is still waiting for those numbers, pending an analysis. The BTL chairman noted that BTL and GoB are still working together to bring discounted data packages and free internet to various schools and underprivileged households across the country. He stated that the company is also examining their costly infrastructure to reduce service costs and monetize their assets.