Collecting garbage, it's the dirtiest job in the world, but the business of moving it, and managing it is big money and tonight, 7NEWS has evidence that disgraced former city Mayor David Fonseca signed a waste management contract that carries a stench far worse than the waste it seeks to manage.
On November 28, 2005, as then-chairman of the Belize Solid Waste Management Authority, Fonseca signed the contract with a group called Ecology, Environment Energy Management Company. It's a grand name, but from what we've been able to come up with, it's not much more than that: it has no listing in the phone book, and no office we could find. But if you're talking about a paper company, they do have that and in abundance, and that is, paper with the Queen's picture on it.
Reportedly acting without the approval of the Waste Management Board he chaired, the Cabinet, or the Ministry of Natural Resources which appointed him, on November 28, Fonseca signed a 25 year, $42.3 million contract with the previously unheard of company. Under the contract, the three "e" company would collect waste at a mile 7 site, haul it to the national waste management site at mile 24 and manage it there. The monthly charge for this is $141,000 or $1.7 million annually, for 25 years.
Though no work has been done, the contract commenced this month and the first $141,000 payment is due from the Ministry of Natural Resources on April 30th, 2006, in just 10 days. That would be good and well, except that there's no collection site at mile 7. In fact when we went there today, this is what we saw, a vast, verdant field of mangrove and nothing else. The story is pretty much the same at mile 24, where there's only the beginning of the road to a national landfill site that doesn't exist either. And if all that wasn't enough of an outrage, the contract dictates that government is supposed to pay the company $985,000 to build a 90 by 60 guard hut.
So now, the first regular monthly payment is due from government in ten days and, as we understand it, who will pay is a matter of some dispute within government. As we noted, Cabinet never approved or even saw the contract, and neither was it sent to the House of Representatives as should have been done under the Public Finance Reform Act.
According to our information, in December, when the Minister of Natural Resources became aware of the contract he ordered that it be cancelled but, perhaps in deference to Fonseca, the Prime Minister took the matter upon his desk and, 10 days to first payment, we understand that is where it rests. Whether government will pay in 10 days is now left to be seen.
But something does have to happen as regards the city dump because what many don't know, but what we have confirmed, is that government gave away the mile three dumpsite to the Belize Cruise Terminal Limited, the Luke Espat/Carnival consortium that will build the Carnival Cruise Port, which now includes the dump site in its plan. According to our information, Espat is pressing to take over the property by the end of May of this year and unless something is worked out before then, there's no telling where your garbage will be dumped come June.
