And another topic that got Faber heated was the CDB loan motion to help with the damages caused by hurricanes Eta and Iota last year.
While he agreed that the country suffered significantly after the major flooding the hurricanes cause, he added that there was no transparency in the Ministry of Infrastructure. He reminded the House of the emergency tenders the ministry was forced to put out but says that Minister Julius Espat has yet to publish the list of contractors.
Hon. Patrick Faber, Leader of the Opposition
"But what we can't understand, Mr Speaker, is the prime minister's position, his continuous position, along with that of his government, and in particular his minister of infrastructure, who was a stalwart for calling out the UDP when they were in the government for transparency and accountability. So if you've spent all of this money to fix the infrastructure that was damaged by these two hurricanes, let us be accountable to the people. You know I was reminded by Jules Vasquez's Uncut that he had once visited the show and promised he would give all the contract, all who gave what contracts under these assignments, they spent far more than that five million Belize dollars that we are getting now to replenish the money from the Caribbean Development Bank but the Belizean people want full transparency and before you get up and pontificate about what the UDP did, this is why they voted you in, because you were elected on a premise, you said, Vasquez reminded me, prime minister, that you made a promise in your Plan Belize that you would put out all the spending that you do on Smart Stream and all of that and make it public. You didn't say that? Well it's your word against his. But this kind of transparency is what we need so if you've given out millions of dollars in contracts what they said, Mr Speaker, was that it's emergency, it's an emergency, so we don't have time to put out all the tenders and do everything that is needed to do according to the books and they find loopholes in the system to assign these contract so we would like to know, where exactly did these monies go, can you provide us with the contracts, can you be very transparent and open with the monies that the CBD have loaned us for this disaster?"
Minister Espat countered this by saying his ministry was acknowledged by the contractor general for transparency, and gave an explanation for why he was unable to produce the list before.
Hon. Julius Espat, Minister of Instructure, Housing and Development
"If the member from Collet, the leader of the opposition, would have read his papers, he would have seen that there's a contractor general's report. I am assuming, leader of the opposition, that you have not read that report because in that report, the contractor general speaks highly of the Ministry of Infrastructure Development. The contractor general signals us out that we were one of the ministries that provided him with e very detail upon his request. Mr Speaker, we gave the contractor general a complete report of the $12.5 million that was spent for the emergency spending. Your agent, Mr Jules Vasquez, yes, leader of the opposition, because it seems that you speak to him and he is your main advisor, I am saying this because you mentioned it. Your main advisor did request from us the report, we were advised by the contractor general, Mr Vasquez was also advised by the contractor general, he was requesting from our ministry that our report not be made public until the contractor general could submit his report. The contractor general has now submitted his report and therefore the document we provided will be made public."
