Last week the Salvation Army Primary School was burglarized three times and that third burglary should be the last because the school will now have a security guard. This afternoon the City Council launched its "secure a school" programme where it will placed security guards at selected schools. City Councilor in charge of crime control Mark King says the programme's launch was fast tracked.
Mark King, Belize City Councilor
"We go out into the business community and we bring them together with a security company to assist schools that have been vandalized or broken into and that are not financially capable of actually providing security for their own schools. In terms of Salvation Army, they have been broken into quite a great amount of time and therefore we decided that, our program was scheduled to roll out until the school year begins, however we decided to just fast track and we started today simply because we know the school has been broken into a couple of times.
So the Secure a School program is all about securing the facilities here at the school so that it will not be vandalized and when the children come in the morning, they are going to have all their things to learn with, everything to learn with so we think it was a good idea."
The security guard at the Salvation Army School will be provided by J&B Security Company at a significantly discount rate. The City Council hopes other security companies will do likewise. They are also calling on the business community to assist with actually paying for the security guards.
