But before DYS could launch their survey, they needed to deal with the glaring problem: their office space. For years, the department has been operating on Regent Street, paying rent for a hotel. Now, they're moved to Dakers Street, where Gateway once was. Now, they're amalgamating their services so that young people will be able to get a variety of assistance from one location.
And that move is saving them lots of dollars because, as the director explained, their rent bill across the country was in the hundreds of thousands.
Kevin Cadle, Director, DYS
"We were housed at a hotel, DYS was at a Mopan Hotel. How can we take ownership with almost 70% of the population made of young people and have their main entity housed at a hotel? We were paying something like $8,000 a month for that hotel, not to talk about all the infrastructural works that have gone into that hotel, including right now we have to find funds to rebuild our recording studio which we paid about $20,000 to actually build so we have to do that all over again. We have an identity now, the old Gateway building is now transformed into DYS, we no longer have to pay that $8,000 again, we no longer have to upgrade and renovate a hotel that's privately owned. Now, we can upgrade and develop our own facilities and have an identity. And this situation is not just in Belize City,
this was also in the districts as well. DYS was paying almost $175,000 in rent annually and we don't even want to get into the amount of funds that was being spent just on restructuring or refurbishing buildings that did not belong to the department. Totally unacceptable. So what was Gateway has now been amalgamated to mile 21 and again we had to streamline that program because what was there was only work with about 16 young persons. How could you work with 16 young person and have a budget of almost a million dollars per annum? Which was going into salaries."
"And to other stuff and you're not seeing the end result of it but yet we continue to see the impact of crime and violence on our streets. We need to change that, we need to transform that."
And if you think that's bad, the minister, Kevin Bernard, gave glimpses into the deteriorated buildings infested with rodents that he found in Dangriga and Orange Walk.
Hon. Kevin Bernard, Minister of Youth and Sports
"We took immediate steps to say we're not going to continue with this type of behavior. There were funding through the program that had come for CYDP that never got off the ground, how was those grant funding used and utilized, there is no report for it. I mean my personal discussion that I had with the person that was there, that person said to us I'm so disappointed because we only hear about it but nothing came for the program at the ministry at the time. So there's a lot of questions and you rightly said and I would point out the Dangriga office, if you would go to the facility that was there, two container facility, rat infested, pigeon feces all over the place. I asked the person well how come young people were working in this facility, he said well the cleaner had to come in everyday and clean out that, it was a daily routine. We immediately took steps to take our young people out of there and house them in another facility where they are now working in a much conducive environment. In Orange Walk office, you were walking on a floor, if you step too hard, you would slip right through the ground. The ceiling is filled with rat bat feces, stink. We have now gone in there and start the renovation, that is what I think they should have spent money on. So we are looking at improving - how do we expect young people who we are engaged in the ministry to do the work If they are not in a conducive environment."
