GOVERNMENT SEEKS FUNDS TO BEGIN REHABILITATION AFTER FLOODING

November 05, 2008

Hundreds of Belizeans are still being affected by flood waters primarily in the Belize River Valley, Crooked Tree and in the Orange Walk District. Today Prime Minister Dean Barrow was the guest on Love FM’s Morning Show and he shared with us the latest figures as it relates to damages.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“The damages only from this second set of events have been estimated at $22.5 million overall, this is of October 29, 2008. That was broken down into $1.3 million in losses regarding household items, $1.3 million dollars in housing infrastructure, the sort of things we spoke about earlier in respect to the Western Cayo District, water damage, damage to fittings, posts, the integrity of posts that have to be in water for an extended period of time. $1.3 million in losses in household items, $1.3 million in losses in housing infrastructure, $10. 4 million in road infrastructure. Again it is felt that after the water recedes, the damage, the losses vis a vis road infrastructure will go up because the flow across and the saturation will clearly affect fundamentally the structural integrity of the road system in various places so that is $10.4 million dollars now for that portion of the country and $9.5 million in losses in agriculture so it is quite a calamity, quite a disaster.”

Prime Minister Barrow explained where the money will be coming from to deal with the immediate problems.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“Remember we had committed $3 million initially for assistance especially to small farmers and together with $1 million for immediate remedial work with respect to the road infrastructure and another million dollars that we were going to furnish the municipalities with because streets have been terribly broken up in Belize City, in San Ignacio, Santa Elena and now in Orange Walk. On top of that now we are going to find another $2.5 to deal with the household losses and with the damage to housing infrastructure. We’re going to use $1.5 million out of the Venezuela funds, the $20  million for housing, we’re going to divert $1.5 million from that and government will find another  million dollars so we can help people as soon as waters recede with getting their homes back together. We continue to supply funds for relief supplies for all the efforts that are necessary in terms of transportation, in terms of mobilizing people in that regard. The Venezuelans have in principle agreed that the $4 million they were providing for agricultural assistance can be used as part of the efforts to assist farmers directly. FAO and others are helping with the seeds for replanting of crops as soon as that can take place. The biggest problem is going to be the road rehabilitation process.”

Prime Minster Barrow said a massive rehabilitation project has to be undertaken as soon as possible. He said however money will need to be identified for the project.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“That money has to come from abroad; we don’t have the extent of funds necessary by way of our local resources, our local budget. The IDB who had already been helping us who this month will approve two loans to Belize; one for tourism development which is $30 million and one for the solid waste management project which is another $30 million. From the time we came into office we had been in negotiations with them concerning another policy based loan of $15 million that would have been primarily for budget support. We’ve said to them and they have expressed their absolute willingness to go along with this,  the details would have  to be worked out and the process will take a little bit of time but we’ve said to them, can we reprogram funds that were going to be made available by way of a PBL  into an infrastructure development project and they’ve said in principle yes so I am not sure whether we will get the entire $15 US we’re talking about for the PBL but if it’s not $15 million, it will be a figure  pretty close to that. The World Bank, remember they had cut off lending to Belize and as soon as the Government changed, we opened up discussions with them. They were going to finalize a couple of projects by the end of this year that they would then take to their board for financing early next year.  Again we’re saying to them instead of looking at three or four projects can we concentrate on infrastructure so if we can get the $15 million or thereabouts from the IDB and we can get another perhaps US$20 million or so from the World Bank, that should help us. There are some immediate priorities we have to do something about drainage in Belama, apart from the immediate remedial work Minister Martinez, Cadet Henderson, Chief Engineer all these people are looking at.  We want to dredge the mouth of the Haulover Creek, we want to dredge the mouth of the Belize River, we want to operate a pumping station by the Haulover and we want to put in all the canals properly lined, all the drainage that is required and we want to raise and reconstruct the highway from Belize City to the International Airport. That’s going to take a lot of money but that is certainly one concrete project that we will be looking at almost immediately.  Generally if we can raise something like $70, 80, 90 million dollars for infrastructure in this country, I think we are going to be well on our way to trying over the  medium term to recover from the infrastructure damage that the disaster has caused.”

Prime Minister Dean Barrow.

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