Tonight - city residents are looking at their garbage pile up outside their yards - and no one's coming for it anytime soon. That's because City Hall owes its garbage contractor, Belize Waste Control 1.2 million dollars, basically 20 weeks of garbage collection the company hasn't been paid for.
And, the news tonight is that they can't pay. The mayor told us today that the municipalities just aren't getting help because Central government is also faced with its own acute cash crunch. Here's more.
Cherisse Halsall:
"Reliable reports reaching us are that Belize Waste Control has suspended picking up garbage in the city and we know that this usually happens when payments from City Halls are in arrears is that the case this time?"
Bernard Wagner, Mayor Of Belize City
"Yes, It is the case. We are in our very slow part of the financial cycle, the council, and what makes it even worse is that we're facing a pandemic and where that has contributed to residents not having the ability or the capacity to pay their fair share of property taxes we are in the neighborhood of 52% so that significantly cut back on the potential revenues we would have had during this time of the year and so that has contributed to the situation with waste control."
Cherisse Halsall:
"Sir in the past the Central Government would have bailed out the City Council of the largest city, with a problem like this, what do you feel this government will do about this garbage problem?"
Bernard Wagner, Mayor Of Belize City
"Well, the government, them themselves are faced with the same realities of a disruptive economic environment caused by the pandemic we had been weathering this storm for close to two years now, all municipalities and I speak on all municipalities now, it's a testament to the management of these municipalities that this has not fallen along the wayside previous to this."
"You have to understand waste control too as well, they themselves are faced with wage bills, they have to find diesel, they have to find operational costs and so our inability to pay them on time impacts their ability to pay their workers and to provide the service to the city. Long term we will have to address the residential garbage fee. There is no getting around that situation the residents of Belize city have to come up to par with all the other municipalities that legislatively has the power to pay garbage fee the power to charge garbage fee."
Cherisse Halsall:
"So I would ask you, Sir what should residents expect to happen to their garbage but to that I'll add, do these residents, the solution, is it for them to come forward and pay property taxes now?"
Bernard Wagner, Mayor Of Belize City
"They can't pay, people aren't working, they just it's a bottleneck it's an entire cascading effect, people aren't working, people can't pay their taxes, the city can't collect their taxes, the city can't pay the garbage people to pick up the garbage, so cascading effect, we can't go and publish a resident's house for sale when they're facing the pandemic and they've lost their jobs that would be cold of us. So it has to be empathy exercised for the residents themselves, they have to take ownership too of their garbage in the interim waste control will pick up two days and we will try to fill the gaps where necessary with our night crew and we hope that to work, we expect that to work until November and when we are able to when we enter another financial cycle where we could get back on track with the provider, but it's a serious situation that all municipalities face the daunting task of operating in a disruptive economy."
A statement from the Belize City Council says that that there will be a change in the current schedule for residential garbage collection across the city. Instead of being picked up twice per week - garbage will now only be picked up once. The city says it's an issue of cost and they are looking for, quote, "a permanent solution."
Well, the contractor who charges that cost is Belize Waste Control - and the company is not one bit happy with City Hall tonight. They say the mayor is trying to unilaterally vary the terms of their contract.
Waste Control says there has been no change to the sanitation schedule, which is, quote, "fixed by contract between the council and BWCL. In fact the council is failing to honour its contractual payment obligation to BWCL and has fallen significantly behind in arrears…for 20 weeks."
BWCL says that due to this, right now it's juggling resources to continue operations and keep staff employed. So what does this mean for you? Waste Control that they are trying to ensure there is no interruption in the collection of residential garbage - but, they warn, if the council does not pay its arrears, they will have to let go staff.
We note that these clashes between the council and its sanitation contractor were chronic under the UDP - but this is the first flare up under the PUP council. And, again, the council owes for 20 weeks - at $60,000 per week - a 1.2 million dollar hole that - in the past - only GOB could get UDP councils out of. We'll see what Belmopan says about this one!...
