And according to Requena, his ministry is also focusing on providing better access to water in the different rural communities. He also insists that in the villages where there is a water board, some of these organizations owe the utility company many thousands of dollars in arrears. Here's how he made that point:
Hon. Oscar Requena - Minister of Rural Transformation, Community Development, Local Government & Labour
"We are working very hard to ensure, we have 108 water systems across this country, I think in 190 odd villages. Out of that, we have 108 water systems and we're working very hard to first of all make sure that these systems are managed properly. Under the last administration these systems went into total mismanagement, total un-sustainability that is why you find many of these water systems owe a lot of money to BEL, we inherited a system where many of these water boards owe over half a million dollars to BEL. We are working diligently to ensure that we change that. The first step was to ensure we appointed water boards that are going to be held accountable for the people's money, that's the first thing we are doing. Secondly I want to say to you as I said earlier, we are working very hard to ensure that those communities that do not have a water system - I can mention to you for example in the Toledo district we have Mafredi, Jalacte, we have Santa Elena and Mabilha and we have already drilled and found water for Mafredi, we went into Mabilha as well and we went into Jalacte and we'll go into Santa Elena every soon, we still have to go back to Jalacte because unfortunately we could not find water but I also want to say to you that we are rehabilitating several systems across the country, we rehabilitating Xunux in the Corozal district, Georgeville in Cayo, Mahogany Heights in the Belize district among others. So, we are working very diligently to ensure that this gets done."
