And while he says the Immigration Department is in check, for the most part, the garbage situation in Belize City is messy. For the second week now, only some residents' garbage has been picked up, while for many others, their drums are overflowing.
We asked the PM if Central Government will step in and help CitCo pay its arrears which is close to a million dollars.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"We have to. We could play politics and I know it's not our fault, but at the end of the day we have to ensure that the City Council can function properly. The City Council is going through some hard times, the revenues are not coming in as fast as they should and that's something we need to work with them, how to ensure that they could collect the revenues because what citizens in some instances don't understand is that it is with their revenues that we collect from them, property taxes for instance, that's what we need to be able to provide the services. When you pay $100 or $200 or $300 to the City Council, that's nowhere enough to be able to pick up the garbage, clean the drains, fix the streets, keep the parks clean and nice and everything, it's not enough. So at the very least we can ask our citizens to pay their property taxes. I met yesterday, I was at a function, the Christmas party that they had and I commended Mayor Wagner and his team for taking the time out to bring in all of them, even the sanitation workers, everybody under one roof and spend some time with them. I spoke to him about it and we were planning a meeting on Wednesday and see how we could work with them to ensure that we could deal with this. Obviously the issue of that contract, it seems that it is a never ending contract and I think that's something that we have to find a way how we can deal with that. It comes to an end in 2027, but supposedly it's supposed to continue again, I don't know, but we have to get legal advice. It is something that has been troubling several City Council administrations so obviously it's something that's probably unsustainable for the city and maybe the city can do it by themselves. I can use Orange Walk Town as an example. We signed a contract with a private contractor and within a year, year and a half, we realized that this is unsustainable, we broke the contract, and so now the Town Council picks up its own garbage and they're doing a fairly good job."
