And that's not the only issue generating major public opinion blowback against the Briceno Administration tonight.
This morning documents emerged which show a 3.3 million dollar payment to SMART, the phone company owned by the family of the Prime Minister.
A Smartstream invoice dated first July shows a payment request to vendor SMART Belize for 3.37 million dollars for Microsoft 365 Licenses. Then a Ministry of Finance Invoice dated 9th August, 2021 reflects the same charges and says the payment should be made immediately.
This is a contract for bulk licenses for Microsoft 365 used in computers across government ministries and departments. In the past - since 2018 - GOB has made these purchases from BTL.
That was done deliberately to bolster the national telecoms - but now it has become a matter for public tender - and a release from the government says that of three bids, BTL, SMART and a regional company SMART's bid was lowest and that is why they were selected.
The release says, "the process was open, transparent and fair. There was and could not have been any interference, since all three bids were password protected."
