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If you live in Belize City your garbage probably wasn’t picked up today and the chances are that the drain in front of your house wasn’t cleaned and the grass hasn’t been chopped either. And that is because Belize’s two sanitation companies – Belize Waste Control and Belize Maintenance Limited are still working on skeleton staffs because the City Council cannot afford to pay them. It is a garbage crisis because both sanitation companies haven’t been paid in months. BML met with a caucus of city councillors yesterday and asked for $320,000 but the City Council can only afford to pay $70,000. And that is why today BML workers returned to City Hall to protest. We were there.

Keith Swift Reporting,
The one hundred or so BML workers picketed City Hall chanting one request,.

Protestor #1,
“We need our money and we need it now. My kids, we all have kids to feed. Come on Zenaida or whosever is in control up there. We need our money. It is very hard for everybody out here and it seems like those people up there don’t have no mercy on us. We all out here have bills to pay. We cannot tell our landlord not to put us out or we cannot tell the water place or the light place to hold on because they want their money. This is difficult for everybody out there.”

Protestor #2,
“We want our money. We live on the street directly; no rent, no nothing.”

Protestor #3,
“No money, no money at all we the get and government used to give us free books for our kids and we aren’t even getting that.”

Protestor #4,
“Two weeks was the last time I was paid.”

Protestor #1,
“These people need to understand they need to pay our boos so that he can pay us. Look at the street, what will become of the street. Everywhere is all in a mess right now.”

And it might remain that way for a while because BML’s Operations Manager Mitchell Danderson says that only 30 of BML’s 170 employees are working.

Mitchell Danderson, Operations Manager – BML
“We have 30, a little over 30 people.”

Keith Swift,
“So 120 employees who should have been cleaning the streets are not?”

Mitchell Danderson,
“Presently we are not doing the entire street cutting, drain sweeping, street sweeping – it is not being done at the 100% that we normally do but we are still maintaining the services.”

Danderson says the $70,000 offered by the City Council for this week’s services simply won’t cut it.

Mitchell Danderson,
“The $70,000 only covers a week’s salary. It only covers a one week. The company has bills to play, the employees have bills to pay, so $70,000 will not cut it. We can’t have these people working and don’t get any money. We have back pay for them going far back to ten weeks. So we can’t have these people working, some of them have been put out of their house, some of their lights have been cut out, some of them can’t put food on the table, and this is serious thing we have to listen to that. Everyday we hear the workers complaining, ‘boss what will happen we need money, we need money.’

We are hoping that someone will step in either from the City Council because my personal opinion is that the City Council doesn’t have a way out. We would have expected there would be a way out when they met yesterday but it is just talks far as I see it.”

And while that protest was of BML workers, Waste Control says it needs $108,000 but the City Council can only afford to pay $36,000. Deputy Mayor Dion Leslie told us yesterday that the council will meet tomorrow to find the money and then discuss the way forward.