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And now MIDH is working on a housing community in the J&W area of Belmopan. But there have been criticisms that, not only is the area flood-prone, it is remote, and shops and schools aren't readily accessible. This is particularly important since these homes will be low income so they need to be near to essential services. But Minister Espat says that's not the case since the area sits on the border of Belmopan and Cotton Tree.
Julius Espat, Minister of Infrastructure Dev. & Housing
"That is in Belmopan, Belmopan is now a metropolis. I would like to invest more in Belmopan, that is the dream George Price. Remember, Belmopan was built because of hurricanes and how will we not invest in the capital city of this country? That land really is Cayo South, just that we're blessing it Belmopan. But that's in Cotton Tree, just we don't call it Belmopan. And Cotton Tree and Cayo South will become part of of the metropolis in years to come so that's how cities grow. It is not only the houses we are building there. The deputy has I think 500 to 1,000 lots that will be given out to public servants, public officers. That by itself is an awesome- so what we did is that we saw that he had acquired the property and was giving it out to public servants, we went to the Ministry and we spoke with the lead negotiators for the public service and we said, listen to me, we have this money, we would like to build fifty houses there it would be a start for the program, we would bring in light, we would bring in water, we would bring in infrastructure, we would build the bridge to not serve 50 families but to serve 1,000 families and by us doing what we are doing we started the spark so now you now have the initial phases of water infrastructure, WASA already came in, BEL is on it's way in, infrastructure will be there and so it will blossom. Mr Flowers had been on the site, he has been in negotiation with our CEO and the CEO in the Ministry of Natural"
"Resources and you should ask him what their thoughts are on it because we're one family in Belize. We're trying to help everybody and that you see a little water on the ground when we're building, well I've been in construction for 30 years, there's no construction site that doesn't have water through the phases that you go through. Let's see when it's completed. We elevated the houses, they're higher than the roads, we elevated the road, they're higher than anything else, with the last storm that came, there was no flooding in that area, there was some flooding in the area that we're putting in the bridge, which we are aware of but que viva Belmopan, we have to spend more and invest more and be proud of our capital city."
