This morning the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy Leonard Hill handed over the keys for five trucks to Minister of National Security Carlos Perdomo. The Mitsubishi Fuso trucks are valued at US$216,000, just under half a million dollars, and will be used by the BDF’s Light Engineering Company. Commander of the BDF Brigadier General Dario Tapia told us the trucks will ensure that BDF is there whenever disaster strikes.
Brig. Gen. Dario Tapia, Commander – Belize Defence Force
“The fives truck came for the Light Engineer Company and that’s the intention. The Light Engineering Company as you heard earlier in the speech from the Minister is a newly formed company which will have to have the capability to deploy countrywide in case of any projects or natural disasters. So these vehicles come timely for them so that if we need to deploy them, we are able to do so.
We’ve seen the need for light engineering. For this light engineering company in the past, as you’ve seen, natural disasters come our way every year and we have to brace up. Dean again showed us that there is a need for reconstruction at the end of hurricane so this company now will have the capability to be able to respond to any reconstruction, repairs, after any natural disasters. So it is a good timing for them.”
Leonard Hill, Deputy Chief of Mission – U.S. Embassy
This donation is part of the Global Peace Operations Initiative which is a U.S. government worldwide program to train peacekeeping forces for operations in a lot of different places in the world and just recently within the last year or so Belize as well several other Central American countries were included in this initiative.
It is important for a couple of reasons, we see it as important for Belize. It develops capabilities here, this will be an engineering company that will be able to respond to humanitarian crisis or problems within Belize when they are not deployed at other operations around the world. It is important for the United States because we value our cooperation with Belize, with the Belize Defense Force, and it is just another opportunity for us to help Belize develop its capabilities.”
As Deputy Chief of Mission Hill noted, the trucks were purchased through the Global Peace Operation Initiative. Under that program Belize was allocated $500,000 in 2007 and an additional $500,000 has been earmarked for 2008.
