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Seven months ago the City Council began a multimillion dollar makeover of downtown Belize City. It was supposed to take two months and when four months came and went, the Ministry of Works jumped in and promised that downtown would be ready in time for the September celebrations. Well those too have come and gone and instead of getting better – downtown has gotten worse. Pedestrians, vendors, and businessmen have been grinning and bearing it but now those grins have turned to grimaces and those we spoke to today have had enough. Keith Swift has their story.

Keith Swift Reporting,
Royal Caribbean’s biggest ship is in town – ‘Independence of the Seas’ with 4328 passengers, making its first call in Belize. And those who came off the ship today found this – a city choking on its own dust.

Hillary Noll, Cruise Tourist
“It makes my throat hurt. It really does, it bothers me.”

Taylor Jewell, Cruise Tourist
“It gets all over your clothes when you are all dressed up and it is just not very clean. It is not very clean.”

Keith Swift,
Did you expect to find this in Belize?

Taylor Jewell,
“Yes I expected it. I heard it is a very poor city, not to be mean but I did, but it is kind of bad but the people are very nice. The dust is bad.”

The dust is bad for tourists but terrible for street side vendors.

Fruit Vendor #1,
“I can’t even my snow cones and usually does hustle with my snow cones but right now I can’t sell that. I can’t put things in bags to sell, mangoes or anything, because the bag will look dirty. It is really bad. I would want them to fix the street because this isn’t right. I think the Belizean public in general deserves better than this. Regardless if we are red or blue or who is in – we deserve better than this.”

Martha McGregor, Fruit Vendor
“Well it affects so much because right here we have the fruits cut up and people don’t want to buy because they see a lot of dust coming in this side. I need them to fix the street because you know how long we’ve getting the dust everyday. I need the street fixed.”

Keith Swift,
You’re losing money?

Martha McGregor,
“Yes I have to lose money because sometimes I have to throw away the fruits because if they stay there too long it will get dust on it and people won’t want to buy.”

That’s the same story in stores all along Albert Street where shopkeepers have had to cover merchandise with plastic to shield them from the dust. At Mikado’s even Santa has to wear a dust mask.

Umesh Mahitani, Owner – Mikado’s
“The dust affects inventory, it affects the fact that we have to keep cleaning up the store everyday, it affects our health most of all.”

Jules Vasquez,
How much percentage wise or money wise would you say you’ve lost?

Umesh Mahitani,
“I haven’t checked the figures to tell you as percentage but it is a drastic drop in sales.”

Jules Vasquez,
Obviously it seems to me that business people interested in business are not making the decisions. It is either bureaucrats, technocrats, or don’t care-ocrats.

Umesh Mahitani,
“Me alone can’t do anything or say anything. Santa had to come by and show off himself there and that is why we got some attention, because of the Santa.”

Ashok Chugani, Brilliance Shopping Center
“It has been affecting the business, you can see how dusty the place is, and plus with the health it is giving us symptoms we’ve never had before like migraines and what you call colds, sore throats, we have so many customers come in, they see the dust, and they don’t even want to come to Albert Street. From the time the work has started people find other places where the traffic is easy to flow and a much cleaner atmosphere than Albert Street.”

Keith Swift,
Percentage wise or dollar wise, how much money do you think you have lost?

Ashok Chugani,
“You can say almost 45% to 50% of our sales have been down. That is a lot of money and that is lost to the government as well; less sales for us is less revenue for the government.”

Joseph Hoy, Juanita’s Store
“We have been having a lot of problems with the dust destroying our merchandise. We have spent a lot of money on plastics just trying to cover everything but it is a losing battle because the buses are the worse thing, they come flying down the street and they caused columns of dust, the cars are the same things. Our business has fallen drastically.”

Jules Vasquez,
What would you at this point estimate your losses to be?

Joseph Hoy,
“Our business has really fallen, we’re talking about probably 30%, 35%, 40% since this thing has started and it has really done bad to the business because we have bills to pay and the sales are not there. People are complaining about the merchandise. We have brand new merchandise but people think the merchandise is old, they think it is from last year but it is new. It is just the dust. The dust is everywhere.”

Keith Swift,
What would you want to say to the Mayor and the Minister of Works?

Joseph Hoy,
“Well I’d like to say to them this dust is really not only affecting business but it is affecting the pedestrians on the street, it is affecting customers, it is affecting the tourists.”

Pedestrians like Tricia Castillo who got all dressed to come downtown but when she got here – she was competing for attention with the dust.

Tricia Castillo, Bothered by Dust
“I haven’t been to Belize in a longtime so I wanted to come and walk and see what the city looks like now.”

Keith Swift,
So you came downtown all dressed up and what do you find?

Tricia Castillo,
“A lot of dust blowing up and messing up my outfit but maybe they could fix the street and make it a little better for the next time I come back.”

Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Works Cadet Henderson says there is presently no timeline for completion of downtown Belize City. He says the good news is that he met with the contractors today and the paving will only take a week – with two weeks for preparation. He stressed that we should bear in mind that there are four different contractors involved and that there is no financial ceiling on the project.