And while we’ve catalogued the many hurdles that the Mayor faces, those
issues are political; the bottom line is that she still has a city to run. And
right now, it’s a city that’s dead broke and for the past ten weeks
that’s meant that the council has been unable to pay BML, Belize Maintenance
Limited, which is the company that cleans the city.
So on Monday over a hundred BML workers will protest in front of City Hall.
Lawrence Ellis the owner of BML today confirmed that the council owes him $707,000
for just the last ten weeks. He said he’s had to lay off 150 workers while
only 30 are still working – and he’s only been partially paying
them. Ellis told us that for the 15 years of working with the City Council –
where there is a chronic cash flow crisis – he’s never seen the
council this broke.
The City Council’s total debt to BML is $2.7 million, $1.2 million of
that was inherited form the previous council, $1.7 million of it has been amassed
by this council. The protest is set for 9:00 on Monday and Ellis says he expects
most of the workers will come out – while only a few will be cleaning
the city. We’ll have coverage on Monday evening’s news.
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