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Hon. Cordel Hyde
"Friday, almost 60,000 Belizeans who are making just $3.30 per hour. This is no laughing matter. And when you stripped it down to the real, when you get down to the bottom of it, this issue of a minimum wage which is below a living wage early and premature deaths for a lot people, because the truth of the matter is a lot of people who are on minimum wage can’t really afford to buy healthy food. A minimum wage below a living wage means low education output. Imagine living in a room with your siblings and having to study in that room, a cramped room or you have to move from house to house because your mother cannot afford the rent and then we wonder why the PSE score is so low and so the time they raised the minimum wage which was 5 years ago in 2012, they raised it from $3.10 to $3.30. A measly 20 cents per hour. You know what that cost the business owners, it cost them a mere $1.60 per day additional. It cost them a mere $8 per week. I fail to see how giving minimum wage earners are living wage will drastically prevent or drastically affect the lifestyle of the business owners. But the problem we have in the country when we deal with the minimum wage is that the business persons they are the ones who have voices. They are the ones who are consulted. Nobody consults the single mother who has 3 kids and is struggling to make ends meet and can’t send her smart daughter to SCA, because they can’t afford the $1,000 a year in tuition. Nobody consults them. Nobody consults the security officers or the janitors or the hotel workers who are trying to make ends meet. Nobody talk to them and nobody talk for them. This government likes to talk that they are pro-poor. So really they should defend in the interest of those persons. But that’s not what’s happening, because the truth of the matter is they want to keep those people poor. The truth of the matter is how they control the masses. You hear them laughing over there. What they prefer to do is give these person a $50 a week, instead of employing the policies that will make them have a better life. Instead of employing the policies that will lift them out of poverty, because it’s easier for you to control them when they have to come to you to beg you for some money, because that’s what you do, member for Mesopotamia. That’s all you've done. That’s all you've done."

Hon. Michael Finnegan "He was minister of education during that 10 long years. The people of Mesopotamia Division never one day get one education assistance out of you who claim that you are black and poor and you love the poor and the black. Never one day them poor black people in Mesopotamia Division get one cent out of you as minister of education."

"Now, they talk about what I do for the people in Mesopotamia Division. Madam Speaker, when a poor lady come to me, I don’t have a lot, and I could give them $50, $25, $100, $150 out of my pocket or government money. Madam Speaker you know what that does, it buy beans, rice, pigtail and a piece of meat to feed their families. So the member from Lake I have no authority to talk done to me and to tell me what is poverty, the experience of poverty and what I have experience because of poverty. But I never sorry for myself. Furthermore, I was not only born poor, I was born a handicap and I did not stay in a corner and cry and fold my arms and depend Collet Gill and Clive Tucker etc. to help me. I got out there and I full with my hands I push wheel cart. I full very drum in Conchshell Bay, every drum at the long barracks at Yabra in order to make a money so that I can eat and give that 50 or 25 cents that I earn to my mother."

"Talking about rent house, Madam Speaker I live in a long barracks. I live at Conshell Bay where you represent boy. I live in Conchshell Bay. I grow up in Conchshell Bay in front of the canal. I remember we use to have a bucket in our house and soon in the morning before daylight comes my little sister they took the bucket to the canal and throw it and wash it out in the canal. You is telling me about poor and poverty? That’s why the people of Mesopotamia like me. That’s why they voted for me elections over elections, because I understand their problems. I know their needs and I attend to it and I will continue to attend to it and yes the minimum wage have to be looked at again, but it must not be done in a vacuum, it must be properly thought out and then properly presented and then all hands will be safe."

There was more from today's house meeting - which ran until very late and we’ll have those highlites for you on Monday.