Today more than 150 families in the Belize Rural North division received
their piece of the Venezuelan housing money. But it wasn’t cash, this
morning at the Sandhill Community Center they each got purchase orders from
Area Representative Edmund Castro. The residents will then be able to take the
purchase orders to suppliers who will in turn give them whatever they need to
repair their homes. With residents spread across 26 villagers, Area Rep. Castro
says it’s been difficult trying to stretch the $400,000 from the Venezuelan
money.
Hon. Edmund Castro, Belize Rural North Area Rep.
“What we’re trying to do is to make sure that we have families
in every villages that get some kind of assistance through the home improvement
loans. We also set out to build, construct approximately about twenty small
houses for some of the families that really either their condition is terrible,
so bad that it is almost impossible to give them two pieces of board, a sheet
of zinc, and so we are trying to build approximately 20 of those little houses
for those families.
It is like trying to do a little miracle but we do it mathematically and
we try to assist majority of our people with between $750 to maybe $1500, majority
of them, so we can stretch it evenly across the constituency. So in our case
it was much more difficult because we are trying to reach so much people.
So me, for us, the 26 villages that we have that crisscross about 56% of
the Belize District, we had to concentrate primarily on the home improvement
grants so that the majority of our people can get some zinc, some boards, some
cement so they themselves can improve their living conditions where they are
at. So it is best for us to give a drop in many buckets as opposed to put one
gallon in a gallon bottle.”
100 more families will receive purchase orders next week.
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