We tried out the New Link Road a few weeks ago - when we took a test drive in a zippy electric car. The five-mile-long road which goes from mile 8 on the George Price Highway to the airport road off the Phillip Goldson highway, felt like a dream.
Well, now it has been officially opened and dedicated to a little-known historical figure. The UDP leader elect said Cabinet made the decision to invoke the memory of Johnny Smith, the first leader of the PUP:
Hon. Patrick Faber, UDP Leader Elect
"We thought long and hard in cabinet and we came up with the name of John Smith and I know that people have been asking, who is John Smith. Well that is exactly why we are honouring John Smith in the way that we are now because we believe that once his name is etched on this link road permanently that Belizeans will always want to know who he was and for the benefit of those who don't know, John Smith along with others, some of the great leaders of our country like Phillip Goldson and George Price, Lee Richardson, Nicholas Pollard, these were the individuals who started the nationalist movement in Belize and in fact, Johnny Smith as he is more affectionately known, was the founder of the People's Committee which Belizeans who studied history and those who were alive back then, know fought against the devaluation of the British Honduran dollar back then in 1949 and in later transitioned in September of 1950 to become the first political party in our country, which you all know is the People's United Party. So John Smith was the first leader of the PUP and he remained their leader up until 1952, so we are now standing on this road, it is going to be known as the John Smith road and as minister Montero is suggesting, we should even upgrade the name to a highway, since it is linking two of our major highways, it is going to form a part of the national highway system of Belize. So we are now on the John Smith Road."
Hon. Rene Montero, Minister of Works
"This road was funded by OPEC, supported by the government of Taiwan and it took approximately two years to be completed and it was built by CISCO construction and this road is very important because it will create opportunities in agriculture also for residential areas and commercial properties. Also it will save time when you're travelling, when you're coming from abroad through the international airport and going either south or west, it will save time and if you notice it was built to international standards and it has a lot of safety features in terms of the two roundabout that we have."
Works were completed by CISCO Construction this month, under budget at $33 million Belize dollars. As you heard, it was funded through a loan from the OPEC Fund for International Development, with financial support from the Government of the Taiwan.
