As we've been showing you for the past few nights - one of the most critical needs is housing. So many homes were demolished or structurally compromised by the storm. So, how can the Ministry of Infrastructure, Development and Housing respond adequately to so many in dire need? We asked the PM about the quality of replacement homes:
Jules Vasquez
"How will you all prioritized the quality of housing to make sure it has some level of storm resilience while at the same time being affordable for all parties involved and also being something that can be built quickly, because people are in dire and urgent need."
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"That's a very good point that you make. Most of the houses that were destroyed were these plywood houses or houses that were just quickly put together. So, the idea is that we want to be able to build as many houses as we possibly can for as many people as we can within these areas and then also for probably middleclass families see if we can get some low-cost funding interest rates so that they could also rebuild and rebuild better. We cannot continue to giving them plywood houses, because then we are not doing anything for them. With the next storm it's going to be blown away and also you continue to perpetrate poverty and when you look at the conditions that our people live, I don't think nobody should be living under those conditions in 2022 anywhere in the world especially here in Belize."
