There's no forgetting the messy protest by 50 BML workers last month in front of City Hall. A truce was brokered when Government undertook to pay the huge arrears to the sanitation company on the understanding that City Hall would keep current with its debt. Well, 6 weeks later, BML is complaining that it has still not received payment after the early August agreement but Mayor Darrell Bradley disputes that report.
Darrel Bradley, Mayor of Belize City Council
"That is not the case. I have been meeting with BML's attorney who is Mr. Shebat and we entered an into an agreement with them in terms of how we are going to deal with the arrears situation. They took into account that they are being given 35,000 dollars per week, by the central government. On top of that the city council had agree to pay them 10,000 dollars at a minimum so that we don't go further into arrears with them. We also have them two 50,000 dollars payments to settle some of the bill. We recognise we owe them a lot of money and those two 50,000 payments are minuscule compared to what we owe them but it was a good faith payment. The agreement sets out payment periods, at the ending of this month will make a payment of 5 weeks which is about 350,000 dollars and the ending of October, we're going to give them 3 weeks, which is about 210,000 dollars and we have agreed we will settle the full arrears position by the ending of January and this agreement has been signed by us, signed by them. It's not a perfect situation and I expect there is still some unease on both sides including them. They're due the money and because of our financial position unable to pay them in full, but we've made representation to them that we're going to settle. They were gracious enough to negotiate with us in terms of agreeing to this payment plan and we are following it out in good faith and we expect come February, we will be able to deal with them completely, and we will have no other issue with them. Separate issue, entirely from that is how we're dealing with the transition to the new system and I've made this point repeatedly that it is very difficult for us to absorb 170 people. You're not only talking about salaries, you're talking about pension liabilities, you're talking about uniforms, you're talking about equipment, you're talking about management and supervision which the city council is notoriously poor at in terms of ensuring what we have, we're managing very well and recognise we have limitations here."
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