On Friday Belize City Mayor Zenaida Moya declared that her council had no money to pay the workers of SEL and BML, the two companies that clean the city. So, inevitably, today, 140 employees of Belize Maintenance Limited showed up for work only to again be told that there is no work and no pay for them. Job-less and pay-less, they were ready for a picket, but before they could mobilize, they were advised that they had no permit to protest. But that didn't stop them from gathering in the compound to express their frustration and 7NEWS was there to capture the street cleaners' rage.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
With the BDF Defender circling overhead, some one hundred of the 140 employees of Belize Maintenance Limited gathered at their place of employment to hear again what they have been told before. They cannot collect for work they have done over the past week and there is no more work for them.
Lawrence Ellis, BML
"On Friday I told the workers that effectively from Friday we will not be working anymore because we cannot afford to pay and they decided that they wanted to do a demonstration so they showed up this morning prepared to do a demonstration. I am advising them not to go out there today because they don't have the permit and I don't want anyone to get into trouble because their tensions are high, they are very upset, school is opening, most of these people have weekly rent, and they live week to week on their salaries. School is opening and no institution wants to lend them any money. I can't afford to lend them any money. So they are in a serious situation. Even us, we can't meet our bills and we have a lot of bills."
And nobody can meet their bills, the council can't pay BML and BML can=t pay its workers and today those at the base were thoroughly outraged, directing their anger at a single individual.
Alfonso Noble,
Who do you blame for what's happening here?
Dorla Ramirez,
"We are blaming Mr. Musa because he did all these things and he allowed all the corruption to happen right now which is causing us and our children to struggle hard and no kind of success is happening with this thing. I have five children, three are out here right now, the next two smaller boys are hustling right now because I haven't finished preparing for them and then right now I am on standby. I don't have a job right now. Mr. Ellis, my boss right now, I can't blame him because if the government doesn't help him, he cannot pay us. So I don't blame Mr. Ellis, I blame Mr. Musa because if Mr. Musa had given the money to give to Mr. Ellis to pay us, we would all have our jobs."
Vivian Arzu,
"I came to let Mr. Musa pay Zenaida the money to let her pay us. The Prime Minister is the one because if he pay us, everything will go fine."
Worker #3,
"I don't blame my boss. My boss is straight with us. He told us what is going on. But the Minster of Finance is responsible. If he paid my boss, then my boss will pay us. If he paid Zenaida, Zenaida will pay us."
Worker #4,
"We are blaming Musa because he has to pay us. Get off the money because he has the money in his pocket. He has the money to pay her (Zenaida) and if he doesn't pay her, what do you think will happen. It will be a lot of thing in Belize. More robberies will happen and that is what people are trying to avoid in Belize. What about those who have 6 or 8 pickney (children) who are going to high school? We will punish, we will take a licking out yah."
Worker #5,
"Musa is the whole problem right now. He is the problem. He doesn't want to send over the money to the boss so we could have a job."
Worker #6,
"We're not blaming the Mayor is doing a very good job. We are not blaming the mayor at all because it is the limited in what she can do. She just needs for the Prime Minister to get together with her and try to help the workers. We are blaming her because we know she is trying hard."
But it seems that no matter how hard they try the situation has come to the point where these sanitation employees have had to resort to this gathering. They did not have a permit to hold a picket but that did not stop them from coming out, bringing with them the children, the ones who will ultimately suffer especially as school time draws near.
Worker #4,
"Things hard out yah and then I have my children. I am a single mother and I need my money because we already worked for it and then they have to help us with our money because we already worked so they have to pay us."
Alfonso Noble,
So they haven't paid you yet?
Worker #4,
"No."
Alfonso Noble,
How long has it been since you got paid?
Worker #4,
"For one week they haven't paid us and we need our money. I don't know why they are holding back because we already worked and we need our jobs. They already took our jobs from us and now we are on standby. How will we survive? We are not even prepared for school yet. We haven't done anything yet and then school is going to open right now on us."
Worker #3,
"Right now very very feel downhearted because nothing is going on right now, nothing is going on. I am not even prepared for my child going into standard six and school is opening soon. I don't right now have even bread to put on the table this evening."
Worker #7,
"Me, I got six children. One is going to high school and he/she doesn't have no school, no bag, nothing for them. See I brought out three of them with me. The rest are home and we want our pay. We have already worked hard out here. Without we, the city doesn't need clean. We work hard out here. I have six children and I need, I am in need. Right now they don't even have school books or school bags."
Worker #8,
"A lot of us mothers are punishing right now. Nobody wants to go and sell their body, nobody wants to go on the street, nobody wants to go back to live the same life they were living, especially me because I have been to jail for ten years already and I don't want to get involved with that because I only have one daughter to live for. She is fourteen years old. Mr. Ellis hasn't done us any wrong. He has done a lot for us, the majority of us so he is enough love. All we want is them to pay Zenaida Moya so that our boss can hire us because he doesn't want to see us go to destruction."
Sonia Harris,
"They should give these people a raise, not take from them and all these people put here, a lot of them, have kids. My sister has like nine kids. She works very hard and when you don't have money to feed your kids, first of all if these people go and rob anyone, they are going to put them in jail but when they work they don't want to pay them. So the government is robbing them right now. You see my shit, it is marked 'BML,' and I don't even work for them but I am out here demonstrating with these people because thing is if you work, you deserve to get pay."
But the reality of the matter is that these workers, for the time being will not be paid and as Ellis stood amongst his workers there was very little he could tell them. What he did tell us however is the council=s negotiations with him are deadlocked.
Lawrence Ellis,
"They are not negotiating. They are telling us it is fifty percent or nothing and that is not negotiation but we are willing to negotiate. The previous council signed the contract with us and they did not live up to their obligations. There is a lot of people saying that we got bloated contracts and stuff like that and we are fronting for some councilor or for somebody, that is total nonsense.
The contracts are the way they are because if you can get a copy of the
contracts and you look at the scope of work in the contract, they ask for a lot of stuff that the city council wasn't even doing and they created the scope of work for the contract and they dictated what the price will be. This current city council knew what they were getting themselves into and said they could managed the city; they took it on.
The council is saying that they are saving money on fuel and all kind of things but you can check and see if they are saving any money on salaries. Everybody that they dismissed from the council, they rehired and more. So I mean don't have a problem if you rehire your people but if we are in a financial situation, we are in a financial situation, you cannot be spending money on one end and then looking at my workers and tell me I can't pay them when they are hiring people to do other worker, clearly stacking up the payroll. So that is not fair either."
Special advisor at City Hall, Dale Trujeque, who himself was out at BML=s offices could only tell us one thing today.
Dale Trujeque, City Council
"Our hearts does bleed for these people. We are hoping, we are still hoping, I think many of these people probably believe the council has the money to pay them when the honest fact is the council doesn't have the money. You cannot squeeze blood out of stone. That is why I don't mind standing out here because I won't stand up here and lie to the people. If we had the money, Mr. Ellis would have received some of the money. We know we're in a very difficult situation. We know school is going to open shortly and all of these people have children that they have return to school and buy things for. They their bills they have to pay. I know it is a very very bad situation for us.
The problem lies with the bottom line: we don't have the finance, sources of revenue we have don't exist anymore and, like I said before, that leaves you in a position where you can't squeeze blood out of stone."
With anger escalating, someone would be well advised to try even that.
While BML has ceased all operations, SEL has not. SEL's Rupert Marin today told us that his company is working at 100% capacity. He expects to keep his work crews on the job for as long as he can. He says he expects to have a meeting with the Mayor sometime later this week to determine exactly what he needs to do. He says a work stoppage will be his last resort.
And while the jobs of 140 bread-winners is a social, community, and political crisis unto itself, the continued cleaning of the city is another as BML is responsible for keeping 30% of the city clean, all of it in the south side. With the joblessness creating all kinds of social pressure and the dirt piling up, the Musa administration is hemorrhaging political capital, and it's not clear how much longer government can afford not to force the Belize Tourism Board to come through with a financial bailout.
