Yesterday, the BTB announced that over the next 7 months CITCO can expect financing to the tune of $1 million for special projects to be approved and supervised by the Tourism Board. Today Mayor Zenaida Moya explained that while CITCO may need the money, it is not about to surrender its autonomy since the project financing comes with too many strings attached. She explained the position to me this afternoon.
Zenaida Moya, Mayor of Belize City
"We want or we need this money and we have a specific area we wanted to use it for and it is to pay the sanitation workers. The letter that we received is stating that we would need to sign an MOU and really the authorization would have to come from them in terms of what projects we use it for. Nowhere in the letter does it say anything as it pertains to sanitation services.
So we are very wary about that because at the end of the day we don't want to say we are going to use this money to assist sanitation workers and they put a stop on it. (If) we signed the MOU, we know we want to use it to assist sanitation workers and later on they (will) say that in the letter they sent us, it specifically stated that the board will have to decide on the projects that it is used for. And clearly, nowhere again, I repeat, says anything as it pertains to sanitation services. So the councilors, we did meet last night at a caucus, and today we will speak further in terms of getting legal input into it because we don't want to bind ourselves.
If we use those money towards these different projects, what will happen. What will we have to pay the workers? The council knows that it should be entitled to a specific percentage of the head tax, it should have been done from the onset. Why it was not done, why the Prime Minister went ahead and didn't ensure that the Belize City Council get a portion, or the Mayor at that time, why the council didn't ensure that a portion was given to them, we don't know but this council knows that the residents of Belize City are entitled and should be entitled to a portion of that head tax."
Moya says the council will continue discussions including legal ones to see if they will accept the BTB financing as it has been presented to them.
