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Driving down Albert Street is like rolling a marble across a tabletop – but try to drive freely anywhere else in the city – and you’re likely to break your suspension or maybe even throw out your back. Since the three days of heavy rains last week, the streets of the city have been in a state! Appalling is too mild to describe it....atrocious may be more appropriate. And don’t expect to see the City Council fixing it, Councilor Anthony Michael who was formerly in the habit of calling us just at the smell of hot tar, has gone AWOL from the media, and the city can hardly pay to keep the streets clean.

So, to the rescue is the Ministry of Works. The Minister of Finance has approved a special disbursement of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to fix up the city’s streets. But that can’t fix all of them, so today we asked Works Minister Boots Martinez which of them will get repaired.

Hon. Boots Martinez, Minister of Works
“The Ministry of Works will be partnering with the Belize City Council to fix as much streets as we could.”

Jules Vasquez,
What does that mean, as many as we can? How much is it? All of them need to be fixed.

Hon. Boots Martinez,
“Well we can’t fix all but especially the main streets; Orange Street, Vernon Street, Baymen Avenue, Freetown Road, and Gentle Avenue. We have a lot of street.”

Jules Vasquez,
But at this time you all don’t have a work plan per se to say fixing of this one and maybe scarification of that one?

Hon. Boots Martinez,
“We do have a work plan from before and we are preparing a new one.”

Jules Vasquez,
But will you be able to tell us because people want to know? Every street is bad and people want to know if their street will be fixed.

Hon. Boots Martinez,
“Right now they are working on Water Lane. They will be moving to Vernon Street, Freetown Road. You have Orange Street and Cemetery Road, right by the gas station there is a big gash there and the list goes on and on. Baymen Avenue, Princess Margaret Drive and so we are starting mainly with the main streets and also we are targeting all of the streets around Albert Street like Church Street, King Street.”

Jules Vasquez,
But are these real fixes Minister or is it the type of thing you all were forced to do in limited time after the flood and we now see that those, if you watch Johnson Street you realize that the fixing that was put on after the floods, now that it has been removed, the street is in worse condition than it was before?

Hon. Boots Martinez,
“We are here to partner sensibly with the Belize City Council, based on our resources we will do our best, we have a good technical team at the Ministry of Works who knows how to patch roads and fix roads so we will be partnering and doing out best.”

Jules Vasquez,
But will it fall apart when rainy season comes May or June?

Hon. Boots Martinez,
“Well you tell anyone road that isn’t falling apart May or June, you tell me. I will be real: we will do our best.”

Work to patch Vernon Street, Water Lane and Cemetery Road was done today.