BELIZE CITY–A payment agreement has been ironed out between Belize Maintenance Limited (BML) and the Belize City Council (CitCo) in order to shave down over four months of arrears, amounting to about $1.5 million, which was owed to the sanitation company, whose owner had subsequently resorted to temporarily terminating some fifty employees in order to keep the company afloat.
Two weeks ago, on Monday, August 4, a frustrated group of BML workers spontaneously took to the streets in response to the situation and expressed their dissent by scattering several bags of refuse in front of City Hall on North Front Street in Belize City in an effort to have their concerns addressed by Belize City Mayor Darrell Bradley.
Instead, 44 of them were arrested and held in detention for over 12 hours at the Queen Street Police Station; however, they were later released and freed of charges for littering and illegal gathering following the intervention of Prime Minister Dean Barrow, who offered to pay the workers’ salaries on behalf of CitCo, via central government, until BML’s contract expires next January.
Last Friday, August 15, Mayor Bradley sent an official proposal to BML for the liquidation of the Council’s arrears by that time, and today, managing director of BML, Lawrence Ellis, told the media that he believes the offer is fair and will be accepted by his company.
He said, “The proposal is fair enough. We accepted it. We wrote back accepting it. Presently the Mayor is out of the country, but we spoke by email. The attorney [for BML] and he [Bradley] spoke by email this morning, and he has confirmed that he will have somebody at the City Hall deal with it until he returns, but we accepted the proposal.”
Ellis noted that the employees are presently back on the job and are collecting their salaries, and mentioned that he intends to invest in some of the equipment that they use to carry out their work; however, he is waiting for CitCo to make its first payment so that he could proceed with that initiative.
Ellis also emphasized that his attorney is already making provision for a course of action if the Council were to default on even the first payment.
That first payment from City Hall, which will be for 5 weeks of arrears, is expected to be made to the sanitation contractor by next Friday, August 29.