7 News Belize

Garden City Struggling, Like All Municipalities
posted (April 23, 2020)

Yesterday we spoke to the Mayor of Belize City about how his council is struggling to provide basic services with reduced staff on reduced wages.

It’s much the same for Belmopan Mayor Khalid Belisle - who, though he hasn’t cut his employees wages - says that the council’s revenue has been cut to almost zero.  He spoke to Feste Films about the situation all councils - red and blue - are facing:

Khalid Belisle - Mayor of Belmopan
"And so in the face of absolutely no one coming through the doors because all councils at this point are closed under this state of emergency, it's really day to day task for mayors and councils trying to figure out how we will continue to me the financial obligations of councils at this point in time. The discussion has been taking place at the mayor's association level of course and I feel the frustration of my colleagues from north to south, east to west, we're all faced with the exact same challenges at this point in time because we are continuing to deliver the service. I don't think there is a municipality where garbage isn't being picked up, where there might be some minimal amount of traffic managements, markets are still open country wide at this point and those things fall under the council jurisdiction but at the same time, we understand that there is only so much that can be done at this point in time, particularly from the government perspective I think. Priority number one of course is keeping as many people as healthy as possible, keeping this virus from spreading further and of course at behind that will come making sure people are fed because a lot of people have lost jobs, a lot people have seen their wages or salaries cut because business places are not open at this time and so keeping Belizean families fed is priority number 2, I would say. I guess at this point for the government, it's just not that much for municipalities to receive out of what is available at this point in time. So the Ministry of Finance and the government has started the process of advancing councils that monthly subvention, that is somewhat digging one hole to fill another but we'll have to figure out how we make that back up down the road but the here and now of it is that we must continue delivering the services that we are expected to."

We’ll have part two tomorrow.

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