At the start of this month we told you about Works Minister Anthony Boots Martinez and his Housing for the Poor NGO. It’s gotten a choice piece of land near the Belizean Beach at mile three on the Western Highway. It stretches from the road to the sea – over 12 acres, and when any such land transaction is involved, it draws attention. And while the Minister has capably defended what he maintains is a community empowerment programme – he raised some eyebrows when he stated plainly that Housing for the Poor operates for a profit and competes for government contracts. A for-profit NGO? Sounds like a strange creature. And that’s what his Cabinet colleagues thought as Boots was asked to make a defence of the programme in Cabinet after our story aired. And instead of drawing flak, seems he won converts and at Wednesday’s press conference the Prime Minister made it clear, he is in the cheering section.
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
“I think when he said that the group is a for profit organization, when we questioned him – our understanding was that the profits that the group makes are ploughed back into the community. When he said it was for profit, he meant for example and I think he told this to you, that they feel that they are liberty to bid, for example for public contracts and he identified one, and when they do this, they bid in a way that sees them making a tender that is not just an at cost figure. So apart from the employment, apart from the people that they have on their payroll, at the end of that particular contract, if they get that contract, they will have some money that they would have earned. But they take that and put that right back into the community. The land that you spoke about, that you showed by way of the television images, he told you that what the group wants to do with that land is to a number of projects including the setting up of a kind of sewing factory, something that particularly ease the conditions of single mothers. It seems to be that all these are wonderful things. What Cabinet agreed was that the portion that had been filled, by the way the land was being leased by Port Loyola Housing for the Poor, no title had been transferred, but Cabinet agreed that title could be transferred to Port Loyola Housing for the Poor of the three or so acres that had already been filled so that they can in fact proceed with the projects, the infrastructure projects that they wanted to do and the rest of the land would be subdivided and given out as house lots by the Ministry of Natural Resources to constituents of Port Loyola. I think Cabinet was perfectly satisfied that we all ought to be bigging up Port Loyola Housing for the Poor.”
