But, as we showed you, the city council, after the go-slow from BWC, decreased their debt to the company from 15 weeks to 9 weeks in arrears for garbage collection. As you've heard many times on this newscast, since Bradley became mayor, he's lamented that the City cannot continue to pay both BWC and Belize Maintenance Limited for sanitation because payment to these contracts sap up 45% of their annual revenue.
So Today, instead of asking the mayor how it is that they're still behind 9 weeks with promises of catching up to a zero balance, we asked him to explain how he would remedy the sanitation debacle which flares up every few months, if he had an opportunity. He says that the previous administration made mistakes in the way they did business with the sanitation companies.
Mayor Darrell Bradley
"Privatization is a good thing. I like the fact that these services are provided by private entities because in the past the amount of employees at City Hall use to be significant because of sanitation services and what that does when government has to do it is that government tends to hire a lot of people based on political reasons. If it is privatized, you are ensuring that there is efficiency and there is a good service because you are able to monitor that and the private entity doing it has a profit incentive to do it well."
"The difficulty with these contracts is that it is private and exclusive, so that you do one side of it making it private, but you take away a significant part of it which is eliminating competition. That's was a horrible decision by former city councils. If you have a private system that has competition, meaning that there are multiple people picking up garbage and there is rates that they charge - we can balance the services and you ensure that there is nothing in there about exclusivity, there is nothing in there about automatic renewals and that the public can monitor the service and we can evaluate and if it is too expensive, we simply go to another contractor. That kind of system would be what I would encourage and what I would promote and if I had my way what I would do within Belize City."
"We are paying off a debt, but really what we are doing is we are putting a Band-Aid on a volcano. This is major situation and the reality is that the city is saddled by these contracts and the only way to have a solution is to get out of these contracts."
"One of the things which give me optimism in the coming year is as I had mentioned BML contract will expire and we do not see ourselves renewing that contract. That will bring our cost for sanitation services substantially down and it will record a savings of 4 million dollars to Belize City."
Bradley also categorically declared that he isn't suggesting that the contracts are bloated or unfair in their design. He says that for the amount of revenue the City collects, it just can't pay these 2 companies and expect to operate optimally.
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