On Wednesday, November 27th, Prime Minister Dean Barrow announced that monies will be made available to all municipalities for remedial infrastructural work to be done after severe rains pummeled the streets for at least two months. As soon as the Prime Minister made the announcement, work crews were activated across the country to carry out the work.
Nowhere was that immediate action more visible than in Belize City where work crews were deployed to the Flag Monument roundabout, the entrance to Belize City at the Lord’s Ridge Cemetery, Pen Road, Baymen Avenue and Newtown Barracks. The work is being carried out with impressive speed; the work at the flag monument was completed within five days, making the driving experience more pleasant. Work is also ongoing at the entrance to Belize City which will be concreted by the contractor RJB; Pen Road is also well underway.
But while the work is ongoing, the two most impressive street works are being carried out on Newtown Barracks and Baymen Avenue. The contract to complete both these streets was awarded to CISCO construction and as it has now become the trademark of this contractor, the work is being done using a large pool of workers. According CISCO’s Francis Woods, 50 men are being employed at the Baymen worksite and another 50 are being employed at the Newtown Barracks road.
Visiting the site, the sheer number of employees is dazzling and even more so is the speed at which they are able to manually mix concrete and pour it on to the streets. They resemble bees working in unison to achieve their objective. One young man pulled out a few dollars and flashed it to our camera and exclaimed “No Work, No Money. We got money!”
And that is the driving force behind the UDP government to improve the country’s infrastructure while at the same time creating employment and opportunities for everyone.
