31.1 C
Belize City
Thursday, March 28, 2024

World Down Syndrome Day

Photo: Students and staff of Stella Maris...

BPD awards 3 officers with Women Police of the Year

Photo: (l-r) Myrna Pena, Carmella Cacho, and...

Suicide on the rise!

Photo: Iveth Quintanilla, Mental Health Coordinator by Charles...

The fight amongst Ex-Servicemen ? Roberts wants to sell Canada House!

GeneralThe fight amongst Ex-Servicemen ? Roberts wants to sell Canada House!

That war continues even as the Council has expelled the Belize City branch, but that did not stop the old capital branch from holding a press conference on Wednesday morning at the Canada House, the League?s headquarters at Newtown Barracks in Belize City. Just how did the expelled branch get to use the premises?


?Because they came with a torch and burnt the chains and locks off the door. Because the Supreme Court is not in session, they can get away with that. As soon as the Supreme Court is in session, we?ll rectify that situation,? declared Ivan Roberts, the chief executive officer of the Belize Ex-Services League.


Roberts, a Belizean who was a former soldier in England, was a member of the Belize City branch, but what is even more ironic is that the other two key members of the Executive Council have, in effect, expelled their own branch. The Council?s president, Bernard Adolphus, who we have so far been unable to reach for comment, and Major Andrew Kelly, are reportedly Belize City branch members.


On top of their expulsion, the BEL also plans to get a court injunction to freeze the city branch?s bank account?a move that has raised the ire of the members, who say that they have dug deep into their pockets and have labored hard to build their fundraising account. They say that the Executive Council gets funds from both Canada and from the Government of Belize, and question what it has been doing with those funds.


Roberts told us that according to Section 7 of their constitution, if a branch is expelled their funds should be transferred to the Executive Council. Roberts had frozen the branch?s account at First Caribbean about two months ago, but the bank?s attorney advised them to unfreeze it, and so the plan is to seek a court order to have it frozen again.


?If the people within the branch were functioning within the constitution, we wouldn?t have to reach those extreme measures,? Roberts added.


?The Belize City branch is not the one on trial here; it is the Executive Council that really is on trial here for its gross mismanagement of its office,? said branch chairman, McKesson Garrett, also on Wednesday. ?They are now throwing a smoke screen to hide their deeds and creating a scene to coerce the other branches to ride with their program.?


Wilfred ?Sedi? Elrington, attorney for the Belize City branch, says that the Executive Council has no authority to expel the Belize City branch. Elrington said at the press conference on Wednesday: ?The persons who are purporting to be exercising their authority as executive, in fact have not been elected in accordance with the constitution.?


He added that the Executive Council ??wanted to expel [the Belize City branch], let things die down for a month or two or three, and then they will seek to recruit new members to the Belize City branch, members who they think they will have a better, easier chance of dealing with.?


Rose Armstrong, assistant secretary of the city branch, insisted, ?We are not violating any part of the constitution, and as our attorney rightfully said, the council is operating illegally, because we have not had an election for the past two years. February gone we should have had an election. No elections were held and it?s three persons up there??


According to city branch trustee, Terrence Belisle, the schism is rooted in allegations that $20,000 had gone missing from the branch?s accounts. He said at yesterday?s press conference that they could not accept the accusations that one of their members had misappropriated the money, and according to Garrett, an audit conducted by the firm of Mark Hulse this February showed no irregularities.


Some branch members say that the problem erupted in 2003, when an Englishman, A.V. Bradley, came to the branch and began serving as treasurer. What Bradley was really doing was scrutinizing the books of the Belize City branch.


According to Roberts? account posted on the website www.geocitites.com/belizeexservicesleague, it was Bradley who informed the BEL?s parent body, the Royal Commonwealth Ex-Services League (RCEL) in England, that funds had been misappropriated. Consequently, BEL (Council) received no money from RCEL to support the veterans for several months in 2004 and 2005.


Roberts? report said because they weren?t getting any money, they ? ?broke fixed deposits, withdrew from savings, and took funds from branches to sustain the veterans. When all the funds were finished, it meant that the veterans did not receive any allowance for four months in 2004 and three months in 2005.?


Apparently the Belize City Branch, which fundraises each month by having dances at Canada House on Newtown Barracks, was the only branch with money. The Council had to then borrow $3,000 from the Belize City branch. Garrett told the media yesterday that the Executive Council still owes the branch $1,800.


He said that five branch members had formed an entertainment committee and had begun to hold dances at the venue to raise money for their veterans. They claim that the money is held to bury their members, because the league only gives branch members $200 to bury their dead, whereas the branch?s allotment per burial is $1,000. Fundraising, he said, is a must, since they only charge members $4 a month for dues.


The branch almost lost control over its bank account two months ago, when Roberts went to the bank and froze their account at the First Caribbean International Bank.


We asked Roberts why he did this. His response was that, ?Because we were expelling the branch and we did not want the funds to be misappropriated, we started to freeze all their accounts based on that Section [7] of the constitution.?


Reportedly, the issue of the Belize City branch?s expulsion came up in late 2004, when the Secretary General of the RCEL, Colonel Brian Nicholson, came to Belize and laid down what were described as ?draconian measures? that the Belize Ex-Services League was told it had to implement.


One of his ?guidelines? was for the expulsion of the Belize City branch. He also told BEL that the Belize City branch should pay rent to use the building, and so they began to charge Belize City branch $300 a month for rent. Added to that, the Belize City branch was asked to pay $100 a week for fuel. The branch, which reports holdings of about $15,000, feels that the new levy is too stiff.


At their press conference on Wednesday, the reps of the branch told the media that the Executive Council had actually been demanding $600 per dance?a claim that Roberts has denied.


The Council accuses the branch of sitting on huge deposits in the bank, while other members did not have funds to access.


For its part, the Belize City branch says that the Executive Council is not properly accounting for certain funds and is trying to make them do the job of the executive council, such as delivering monies to veterans.


Roberts told us today, ?The paramount cause [of their expulsion] is their failure to distribute the money which is to be disbursed to the veterans.? He said that whenever the branch is given monies to disburse, it returns the money to the office, citing the reasons why it will not distribute them.


Roberts said that if they don?t follow the guidelines from RCEL and if the current problems are not resolved, their funding from abroad could be cut off. It would mean that the group would have to find new ways of supporting veterans, and one controversial idea that has been much discussed in the public forum is the sale of the Canada House?the very house that hosts the Belize City branch?s fundraising events.


Roberts said that it was his idea that the building should be sold if their parent organization cuts off funding for veterans.


?I made the suggestion that we could sell the property for two and a half million dollars. And let?s assume that we sell it for two and a half million dollars, we could take two million dollars and put it in an account similar to the Baron Bliss account, having the interest compounding monthly, and after one year the interest would yield us two and a half times more than what we are getting from Canada right now,? Roberts said.


According to him, there are 76 veterans of World War I and World War II across the country, and the majority of them are in Belize City.

Check out our other content

World Down Syndrome Day

Suicide on the rise!

Check out other tags:

International