Today Beltraide handed over a set of keys to the University of Belize for a brand new security and maintenance facility at the UB Faculty's Campus in Belize City. This is a much smaller structure than the one which will be housing the the Belize Enterprise and Innovation Institute, a Beltraide initiative to foster innovative business ideas in the country. Last year Beltraide and UB broke ground to mark the start of construction for this facility. But when the plan was being laid out, the contractors realized that the existing security maintenance facility was in the way. So to compensate Beltraide promised to construct a new building for this purpose. Today that promise was kept. We caught up with the stakeholders this morning as the keys were handed over and also got to speak to them about the construction of the larger facility in the pipeline.
Alan Slusher, President - UB
"We are very happy for these new facilities. We are very happy that BELTRAIDE has it fit to construct a building on our premises and it was our good fortune that our facilities building was in the way, because we had been looking at it and recognizing that the space that we had in the facilities that we had for our staff weren't really up to par. But obviously the institution is cash strapped and we didn't have any resources to fix it. So we are very thankful that our minister for BELTRAIDE need or desire to build a building at a particular spot, which meant that we would get new and nice facilities. Part of the arrangements and BELTRAIDE can describe it much better than I can - they are creating and enterprise and innovation center which will also utilize our staff and our students as part of the process in building entrepreneurial and business capacity for Belize."
Hon. Tracey Taegar-Panton, Minister of Stare/Innovation
"We are still working on the timeline. Like I said, we have gotten some initial finding. We don't have all the funding that we will need, so we are in that process of fundraising for the project as well. We are hoping, within the next two years, but certainly we will have it up and running. It's also about building the capacity of the people who will be running the innovation center and so that is happening in parallel with the actual construction of the physical facilities."
Reporter
"How much will this project cost?"
Hon. Tracey Taegar-Panton, Minister of Stare/Innovation
"I don't have that figure on the top of my head, I believe it's a little bit over a million dollars and it is 30 year agreement with the University of Belize and so we look forward to a very long term partnership in the development of Belize with UB. We have always had that partnership with UB, but it will only help to strengthen the relationship and really providing training that is relevant to the development of the country."
The security and maintenance facility handed over today is valued at 60 thousand dollars.
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