And from the prison to Price Barracks, today the US Embassy donated five military trucks to the Belize Defense Force. This donation is part of the US - Belize security cooperation, which promotes national and regional peace and security. The truck will enhance the BDF's ability to troops and supplies throughout the country, respond to natural disasters, and participate in international military exercises.
Today the Charge d'Affaires, Leyla Moses Ones, and the Acting Chief of Staff of the BDF told us more.
Layla Moses Ones, Charge d'Affaires
"We're really proud of this latest donation that's come under the Ford Military financing program, this is part of a total of $1.6 million donation in the last year, this will provide a mobility platform for the Belizean Defense Forces to mobilize their troops to deploy wherever is needed and however is needed, it's also an important component of inner-operability as we exercise jointly to beat natural disaster and border security challenges jointly. Our cooperation goes back more than a decade but the mil to mil ties have probably never been stronger, we came out of the pandemic looking for opportunities to innovate, to strengthen our border security, it was mentioned by Lt. Col. Leal, the issue of transnational criminal organizations, it's a very real threat, we take it very seriously and we're here to partner with Belize and our commitment is steadfast."
Lt. Col. Jermaine Burns, Acting Chief of Staff
"It is a welcome addition to our fleet; our fleet has been aging. Back in 2020, we got about six of these trucks but you'd imagine the amount of operations we have across the western and southern border and internal operations, we have been stretched thin in terms of mobility so these trucks are going to fill some of the gaps when it comes to our operational necessities for border operations and far to reach areas, like the commander BDF said. The trucks will be used primarily by the infantry battalion so we're splitting them up, two are going in the south for the southern area of responsibility and another two in the western and northern area of responsibility and we're going to keep one here at the motor transport department to assist with day to day running of the force here. It's going to complement our fleet of the six that we still have and some older trucks that we've been using but it's going to help us to bring in those for maintenance and push those ones out. We're going to run a short driving course to refresh the operators of these vehicles, we're going to attempt to have dedicated drivers rotating on these newer trucks until everyone has gotten that level of training, confidence, and so on to be moving our troops around in them."
The total value of the donation is 625,000 US dollars.
