It's a story that's been causing quite a sensation: did the social security board break a term deposit at the Scotia Bank to give Glen Godfrey, just so that he could pay them back 6 million dollars for a defaulted loan - with that same money? Well many in the know say that's just what happened. But today the chairman of the social security board Yasin Shoman told us that social security didn't break its term deposit; it came to maturity and the board decided not to renew it.
Shoman then adds that the money was not used to give Glenn Godfrey so that he could make a show of paying them back; he says the money was instead used to buy the controversial two thousand acres of undeveloped land on northern Ambergris Caye for 7 million dollars.
For most social security critics, that's not even a small consolation, because they argue that social security should not be taking money out of the bank where it is safely earning at an 8.8% rate of interest and dump it into land speculation, on a property that is undeveloped, contains a significant amount of swamp and does not have any beach frontage. Those are the types of issues that will be fueling the UDP tomorrow when it stages picketing of social security offices countrywide. The UDP says the event is to keep up the pressure on the prime minister and his government forcing them to establish an independent commission of inquiry headed by the chief justice to investigate alleged wrongdoings with social security funds.
Today social security management prepared its staff by issuing a memo which assures employees that there will be, quote "adequate police presence to ensure law and order." it continues, saying that "for us it is just business as usual and those not wishing to wear uniforms, fell free to do so." We'll have coverage of that picketing in tomorrow's newscast.