7 News Belize

Former UDP Mayor Says His Council Never Got Equipment
posted (August 7, 2018)
But that's just one angle of a story with many sides. The second side we leave to former Mayor Darrell Bradley. His council is the one that received the equipment in a grant from the government in early 2015. At the time Government acquired half a million dollars' worth of heavy equipment to help the council start its own sanitation department and absorb the scores of workers from the private sanitation company.

Bradley today told us that he knew those three pieces of equipment were missing - and he did all he could to get them back to the city council:...

Darrell Bradley, Former Mayor
"I think it would be 3 pieces of equipment including a bulldozer. I am familiar with the bulldozer, because we actually needed that piece of equipment when we did the staff land program. We had to actually pay a private person to clear the land when we were supposed to have a bulldozer to be able to do that. Those pieces of equipment were never turned over to the city council."

"To me there is not an issue of it being accounted for or unaccounted for. I am the mayor and I take responsibility, full responsibility for all pieces of equipment left in my care. We would have done an audit very shortly after that. We would have requested information when the purchase order was done. Shortly after that purchase order was done, we made inquiries in relation to where these 3 pieces of equipment are. We got no satisfactory response."

Reporter
"The information is that in fact the pieces of equipment were across the street at the NGO run by Minister Martinez or functionaries of Minister Martinez."

Darrell Bradley, Former Mayor
"I will say that at the time it was indicated to us that there was a problem in relation to transferring these things. I don't know if he was the minister of works at the time, but we had a problem in getting the piece of equipment we believe that he was the person responsible for turning the equipment over to us. It was never transferred to the council and at the time it was our impression that the minister was responsible for that transfer."

Reporter
"Inna street talk, you would say Boots worked with unu thing."

Darrell Bradley, Former Mayor
"I wouldn't say that. Again, I am a lawyer and language to me is very important. I will say that we were promised a certain amount of equipment and we never got that. No substantial response was given to us. It was an issue and we maintained it as an issue and you would see that there is documentation from the council that we raised it with the appropriate persons that why are these pieces of equipment not turn over. At the point and we made representations to that effect verbally and also in writing and if for what it is, I am not an elected person anymore - that is something that needs to be looked into."

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