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So, now that the Mexican company just up and disappeared, who will deal with transferring waste from local stations to the regional landfill at Mile 24? The garbage has been piling up – though some efforts have been made recently to get things moving. And while the collection and transport of waste is generally handled by the Solid Waste Management Authority, municipal governments do have a say in how operations are run. Mayor Darrell Bradley gave us his position on the situation…

Darrell Bradley - Mayor, Belize City
"Well the City Council naturally is, together with the other municipalities and other agencies that benefit from the solid waste management project. Of course that is under the jurisdiction and control of the Solid Waste Management Authority, so that they are the entity that actually is dealing with the company. Dealing with the contract itself, dealing with trying to see how they can, if possible work out situations. From our point of view, our concern is that there is not any back up of garbage. We were in discussions with our partners with relation to the collection of garbage within the city, in terms of what kind of garbage they were collecting at the transfer station. They had actually interrupted some of what we would consider to be the core services, over the past few months, and we had to engage with them on that point of view on that score to ensure; because it’s important from our standpoint that the collection of garbage and the proper disposal of garbage is something that is not interrupted. So that we’re not directly involved because of course it’s the Solid Waste Management Authority, but we are kept regularly apprised of the situation."

The mayor mentioned that garbage is currently being taken directly to the landfill in the interim, but residents should not worry about any increases in garbage collection costs, since the City Council pays for that directly.