Every week, the City Council pays a combined $118,500 to two private companies, Sanitation Engineering Limited (SEL) and Belize Maintenance Limited (BML) to clean the city. SEL gets $72,000 for cleaning the northside and a portion of the southside, and BML gets 46 thousand for cleaning the other portion of the southside. The contracts are among the city's most pressing recurrent obligations and they had long been neglected. When Mayor Zenaida Moya took over, City Hall owed those companies over a million dollars. Now, Moya's council has worked out a deal to keep current with the payments to the companies but it comes at the cost of the jobs of three dozen employees who will go from City Hall to SEL. Here's the story.
Dale Trujeque, Special Advisor to the City Council
"The council eventually took the decision that we will have to eliminate most of the positions in what is call the Sanitation Environmental Department."
60 are employed in the department but Mayor Moya says it's an undue and unfair burden on taxpayers.
Zenaida Moya, Mayor of Belize City
"By the council paying for sanitation services, council, to these group of workers, and still paying SEL, BML, and Belize Waste Control, in reality, what is happening is that tax payers are paying for duplication services."
Duplication that is costing the council three-quarter million dollars a year in payroll obligations. With that special advisor Dale Trujeque says, they've got to get rid of them. And to make sure that they're not just left jobless, the City Council will transferring 33 workers to SEL.
Dale Trujeque,
"We're making all efforts to try and ensure workers have a job and are not out of a job. But at the end of the day, what is now the Sanitation Environmental section of the council will become just a monitoring section of the council. We have an arrangement with SEL that in us meeting our contractual obligations to pay the weekly cost of the contract, they have agreed to extend assistance to the council and accommodating the council by absorbing an initial 33 workers from the Sanitation Environmental Section."
With the 33 workers, SEL takes on annual payroll responsibility of $367,000. Seems like a lot, but the deal is that if the city pays its bills, SEL take on the workers.
Rupert Marin, SEL
"We had a problem with collection, she had a problem with overstaffing in some areas. We thought that where they are employing people were some of our responsibilities so we offered to take on 30 people then. Our staff is at 263, when we take on this additional people, we are only taking on like eight more than we normally have so it is not like we are taking on $33,000 that we weren't spending already."
Belize Maintenance Limited which cleans up a portion of the southside, says if it gets paid, it is also ready to take on workers.
Larry Ellis, BML
"We need to understand that because we weren't being paid what we were supposed to be paid, when we had workers that stopped, that quit work or were fired, and we did not replace them. So by we taking on people and the council meeting their financial obligation to us, we will just be reaching what we were contractually obligated to reach in the first place."
Of course by striking this deal with the companies, the council legitimizes the contracts for $82,000 a week to SEL and $46,000 to BML. There were rumours that these were bloated and that the city used to do the same job for half that figure, but in the new make nice atmosphere, Trujeque wasn't about to rock the boat.
Dale Trujeque,
"We were legally advised that these contracts were open shut, we have to work with them. We cannot comment on whether they are bloated or not. We are still trying to see whether or not it is reasonable what we pay out now, we have not been able to establish that fully yet."
And while the City Council is still trying to figure out if the SEL/BML contracts are a deal or a steal, 33 workers are being let go and paid off by City Hall and now going to work in the private sector where there's not quite the job security of working for the city. Marin says he'll make only one promise, if they work dutifully, they will always have a job.
Rupert Marin,
"Security with my company depends on your performance so you come to work, you'll be secured."
The City Council still has to place some 20 employees from the Sanitation and Environment Services and BML may take them on. A handful from the department will be kept on for monitoring purposes. Later on, we'll have a little more from today's press conference where special advisor Trujeque disclosed tax withholding irregularities that have been discovered at the council.
