Apart from the 76 million for the BISL settlement, there were two supplementary appropriations bills approved by the house today.
They are for a total of 16 million dollars, and the majority of that - 12 million - is for damage to the country's national highways and primary feeder roads caused by the tropical wave that passed over Belize one week ago and caused significant flooding.
Minister of Infrastructure Development and Housing Julius Espat told us what the monies will be used for:
Hon. Julius Espat, Area Representative, Cayo South
"The flooding was overnight, meaning it was 2 days and it highlighted the weaknesses in our infrastructure system, What most people are not aware is that the villagers like us in the urban areas have a need to get from their houses to work, to school and vice versa. What we have noted is that there is a lack of proper drainage and culverts in all of these villages that I mentioned and so the emphasis is on that, to be able to go to the foundation of the problem instead of just trying to do a band aid type solution. Everybody that you speak of in the country that is knowledgeable on infrastructure from the villagers to the engineers all agree that we as Belizeans and as a government need to invest more in draining our communities. There are some communities though that it doesn't matter how much drains or culverts you put in are built in low lying areas and that adds additional problems."
"12 million dollars for a hard-working Belizean that is having a difficult time even surviving is a lot of money. I understand that and I feel for them, but 12 million dollars when you put it in the context of infrastructure is extremely minimal when you are dealing with 3,000 miles of roads that we have responsibility for and so the 12 million wasn't a magic number, it was a number that the ministry of finance alerted us that they had available and so we sat with our engineers couple days, yesterday was the last meeting we had where all the zone engineers and the district supervisors came in with their detail report. Ofcourse all the districts wanted part of this, but we made them understand that the emphasis would be on the 3 areas that were mostly affected."
Reporter
"And will there be a financial report afterwards to see how this, because as my colleague mentioned 12 million for an overnight of rains, a lot of people they want to see the justification for this. So will a financial report be put out after the repairs are done?"
Hon. Julius Espat, Area Representative, Cayo South
"We are on record. The last emergency funding, I think your boss was the one that requested that financial report and we did do one and it was presented to the contractor general, it was presented to cabinet and the house and to him. Definitely one will be done for this one and if you notice in the presentation that I made I went into details as to where the monies will be spent and the financial report that you all will receive and I will make sure that all of you have a copy of it once the contractor general gives the go ahead that we can release it will be even more detailed, because it will give you the names of the contractors, the areas that was done, the amount of culverts bought and the prices."
