Email

Print

And while President Geovanni Brackett has gotten a lot of air time, not much has been accomplished. Today, Brackett held another press conference to tell the media that he's demanding an explanation from the NTUCB on why their representative on the board voted in favour of the 55 million dollar BTL and BEL investment:..

Geovannie Brackett - President - COLA
"I think the NTUCB by extension needs to give a thorough explanation to this country. Why is it that they voted the way they vote and why is it that it was done so quickly and also we at COLA would want to know if that was presented to the Social Partners on the SSB Board, why weren't they given a leak at least to the media to say these are the reasons why. I think that the NTUCB before that sale is completed should either revisited their voting or give a thorough explanation to the public as to why and to explain to us was there that thorough consultation that the NTUCB normally takes."

Patrick Rogers - COLA Member
"We are at this point now where we are saying, you know what its two wrong it doesn't make a right but a third wrong was now done when the Prime Minister having to make a payment within 10 days after this arbitration agreement came from out of Miami. He went through a process that we call he used the Social Security Board as a slush fund. There's a short fall of cash. He needed cash to pay within 10 days. So, he got the board that he controls at Social Security including the union reps as brother Geovannie said rightly so where we question how they could have made a determination to go ahead with this investment without doing a broad based consultation of the workers. So, my thing is that we will be meeting with the unions. We will be asking if they can look at this rush through agreement that they did to invest 55 million, because the truth of the matter is that it wasn't hashed out."

But more than meeting with the unions, COLA and the BPP want the public to lash out against the entire BTL naitonalizaiton. Here's how they put it:...

Patrick Rogers - COLA Member
"So we are saying, you know you took the man's thing, you should have paid, you know you should have paid for this thing. It was at a book value of 168 million at the time the country took it over when it was nationalized BTL. So, today to have a value, when you add in the loan which I want to speak a little bit about that to the 22.5 million loan that was loan by Ashcroft Bank from Turks and Caucus to BTL, when you add that 97 million to the 4 hundred and 53 million of course you see BTL coming out costing us over five hundred plus million which cannot be a win for Belize."

Rufus X - COLA Member
"That was a smart move. Ashcroft know that BTL was all, but extinct. This is a company that doesn't even worth..... I wouldn't even add value to it, but yet the people were force to pay. This is not the time to be confuse you know Jules. This is the time to get out there and make the politician understand we are your boss. We didn't elect you to be our ruler. We need to get in the street at this time. It's time for people in high places to stand up. It's time for everyone to get up and get out there man."