Our opportunity to speak to the Mayor occurred this evening when the City Council officially handed a brand-new home to a needy Belize City Resident.
Merlene King is an elderly resident of Lake Independence. Her family was devastated by the floods which hit the country back in November. Her story made the evening news, and that's how the Mayor and his team learned about the misery that she was forced to live with.
They deployed quickly and reached out to the business community, who collaborated to build her a 20,000-dollar home to replace the broken-down one she had. This afternoon, the 62-year-old King was overjoyed, and she gave a teary thank you to the Mayor and the corporate citizens who made the donation possible. Here's what she had to say:
Merlene King - Received a New House "I thank Mr. Saddie to put me on the news to make I get this help and I thank the mayor Mr. Bernard Wagner and Mr. Cordel gave me assistance and everybody that help me, thanks for everything that they do for me and god know I don't believe I was going to live in a nice pretty house like this and I thankful to everybody that help me that make I get this wood house. I never had a fridge; my house was old and thing, but I use to have it clean. Now I have a bathroom, I don't have to use bucket to go to the canal and I thankful now because I have a sewage I could use now. I never had water, I use to get water by my neighbour and pay by the month. So, a lot of things I'm thankful for what happened to me."
Bernard Wagner - Mayor, Belize City "Anytime I see an elderly, I get emotional because of my late mother. So, the share deplorable conditions she was living in, I never saw it fit for any human being. I had to try to mobilize get some measure of resource to assist this lady. We came and saw the home and immediately without getting any help yet, I pulled my team, we will move Ms. King out of the house and we rented an apartment for her in the Lake I area for 3 months and then I got on the phone, call my good friend Greg Mehia from Atlantic, I called the Taiwanese Ambassador, called ICB and everybody was quickly onboard with it and I always have to give big respect for the business community and our friends, they played a big role in this. This home run us about 24 thousand, lots of it was done through cash contributions from those 3 entities that I mentioned. We wanted to get it done pretty quick because the longer we stay, we pay rent so, thanks to one of my good friends we were able to get a contractor who worked pretty fast even though we had a lot of rain over the past month but we got it done."
But the Mayor is up for re-election, and this donation conveniently arrives only 13 days before the Mayor and his team will contest the Municipal Elections. We asked him if there was any attempt at political mileage from this good deed for Merlene King. Here's how he answered that one:
Daniel Ortiz "Your opponents would try to suggest that it is very politically convenient that you and your council came to Ms. King's aide right here before your trying to get re-elected. What would be your response?"
Bernard Wagner "But we did a home just the other day without any political bump, this is just the normal course of doing business, we would have wished to have done it earlier if the rain didn't impede us, we would have had finished this house much earlier than close to the elections but the fact of the matter is, we always have to begin to look at the positives in any initiative we participate in and this in itself, no politics could change the impact of this venture miss Merlene King's life."
On December 3rd, 2020, the Mayor and his team delivered a house to the Senior Citizen, Oriemay Evans, who had a similar struggle as today's recipient.
