They've been wanting to do it since Monday, and this morning, Belize Maintenance Limited workers had their demonstration where they took their plight to the streets. Carrying placards and shouting down the injustices done to them, they made their way to City Hall to make sure that those who are indirectly responsible to pay them, do so. 7NEWS was on the street and here's how that went.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
At 8:00 this morning, about 100 employees of Belize Maintenance Limited left their office and took to their way through the city streets. If their calls were not clear and loud enough they carried placards expressing their sentiments. As they made their way to the North Front Street offices of the Belize City Council there was a downpour. Undaunted, they proceeded and even used their placards for shelter and while the placards could not withstand the downpour,
the employees did survive and they braved the rain, continuing to send forth their message.
[Chanting: We Want We Money & We Want Our Jobs]
CITCO employees including its special advisor looked on as the crowd vented.
Worker #1,
"We need our jobs. We have our bills to pay and our children to take care of and our grandchildren to take care of. So please tell them to give us our job because we need our goddamn jobs. I can't go back to do what I used to do because I am getting old so I need my job. I need them to help us to get back our jobs because if we don't get back our jobs we will steal and then they will want to put us in jail. We don't want to go to jail. We need our job."
Worker #2,
"We are the owners, we are just the people. We put them there so they are supposed to do something. They are the breadwinners of this country and we keep this country clean for them so they must put something out there for us."
Worker #3,
"We don't want this no more. We are tired of politics. Musa, stop playing this game man. We are Belizeans, we are Belizeans; blue, red, whatever, pink, whatever. We are Belizeans still. What is going on Musa, wake up and smell the coffee."
In these days however it seems that smelling coffee will do very little to help the situation of these workers who remain in limbo as the council still cannot find the money to pay for their services.
We today spoke to BML's Lawrence Ellis who told us that the trade unions have advised him that he cannot stop work and not pay his employees. So for the time being, the workers are going to work, signing in and the work meter is ticking despite no work being done. Ellis explains that he has no money to pay the employees much less to purchase operational material such as fuel, weed eater strings and garbage bags. Today, after some back and forth with the BTB, we are advised that the board will meet tomorrow and agree to come through with the substantial money.
There is one point of good news in all of this, as St. Catherine's Academy has donated 800 exercise books for the children of employees at BML.
