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Well, today the Prime Minister held a press conference - not to announce that public pressure is forcing government to rescind the contract, but to explain that it's much more than just one mile of road. To do so, he brought in the Ministry of Works project engineer who gave a half an hour masters class on the finer details of engineering - complete with diagrams. Here's a super compressed version of how they explained it:..

Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow - Prime Minister
"We hope today to set the record straight and demonstrate what a fine, necessary, above-board project this is, how it will employ 200 south side people, inject new economic life into marginalized communities and greatly improve transportation and cost efficiencies, especially for exporters using the Belize City Port. I will ask Mr. Moody, who was involved in the design of the project from 6 years or so ago, when it was first conceived, to come and tell you exactly what the scope of works entails so that you and the public can understand that you're talking about miles and miles. The carriageway on Faber's Road is 1.7 miles almost but in terms of the lined canal that is being built from Crewman Lagoon to go all the way to the sea so that those people don't have to go through what they went through on the last occasion when there was flooding and the hurricane and the deputy prime minister had to be scrambling to see how he could help, so that that sort of thing doesn't happen again. The reinforced concrete drains, the sidewalks, he will break down for you the details of the project give you the scope of works so that anybody, who is at all reasonably, will understand that the costing that has been come up with, far from being inflated or bloated, is perfectly reasonable with what you are getting."

Evondale Moody - Project Engineer, Project Execution Unit, MOW
"So when you add those four items together, the road, the concrete, drains and the outfall canal, the preliminary and the generally, you get $7.1 million dollars, easy. I don't see how people could be saying that they could do it for $3.5 and $4 and $5. Honestly, I really don't know. I need them to come and tell me and justify to me how you can come up with that figure. No matter which contractor you ask and I would suggest that you ask a reputable contractor, don't ask any old contractor. Honestly, I'm just being real. Those are the facts. There is nothing that we have blown out of proportion. So, looking at that, that is $7.1 and normally we add in 10% contingencies. The contingencies must be authorized by the engineer, can't be spent just like that, but it's for items that we don't foresee; and that is always the case. For every project, every single project that we've had, we've had items that we've missed out because we are only human. So, I have to include the 10%. So, 10% of $7.1 million is $710 thousand. $710 thousand plus $7.1 million takes you around $7.9, which is what the guy bid. I need someone, based on the news, to let me know how they can do it for cheaper. And this pavement is nothing like the mayor of Belize has done on the other streets. We are at a different level. He has done 4 inch, 5 inch; we are at a different level, complete. And this is some of the stuff that I've learned from Mr. Puga. I've been with him 19 years this year and we've implemented all these projects for the government, both governments, and we have to report to the government and we have to report to the funding agencies. We have to do audit. So, we have to be scrutinized. We are at a high standard, we don't deal with low standards."