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REPORT #362 August 2000
COLLECTION OF TEN SUMMER VACATION DEVELOPMENT ISSUES!
Produced by the Belize
Development Trust
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U.K., TO WRITE OFF JAMAICAN DEBT
U.K. Is writing off a lot of Jamaican foreign debt this year. Britain
will write of about $250 million USA per year for the next three years in
Jamaica, British Secretary of State for International Development, Clare
Short has announced. The money saved in previous years for debt relief
has been agreed upon to be allocated to schools. Britain has written off
about $1.8 billion of debt for Jamaica since 1988.
G 7 MANUFACTURING COUNTRIES DISCUSS DEBT RELIEF!
The USA, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Japan are
promising to make fresh efforts to live up to broken promises, to give up
to $100 Billion USA in debt relief to 40 poor countries. So far, only
nine poor countries have qualified. The holdup is in requirements for
poor countries to have spent the money on health and other programs to
benefit people.
THE PUP NEED TO CONCENTRATE ON SECURING DEBT RELIEF AND TURNING FOREIGN
LOANS INTO GRANTS FOR THE LAST THREE YEARS OF TERM!
In order to get Belize on to a stable fiscal foundation, the PUP party
in power in Belize have to turn over a $1 billion in foreign debt into
GRANTS says the Belize Development Trust. The then government has to
then find a way of reorganizing government expenditures in such a way,
they can function on a budget of average revenues for the last 25 years.
Political restructuring is paramount, the biggest problem the country
faces!
COROZAL FREE TRADE ZONE BEING KILLED BY NATIONAL POLITICS!
The Corozal Free Trade Zone is going down the tubes the media in Belize
say. The Government has announced the intention of repealing the CFTZ
ACT. Zone new business applications are now zero. Uncertainty of the
future has stopped expansion in the tracks.
In a bid for control of the Zone by PUP politicians, a new statutory
instrument gives Florencio Marin, "Dictatorial power over the Zone". New
directors of the Zone are 75 % politically connected. Elections were
subverted and campaigning, by the politicized police force of Belize. (
They answer only to a political party, not the voters!). The Belmopan
PUP saddled the Zone with a $130,000 salary for the reigning CZAR. A
salary he would not get in the USA, much less worth that in Belize.
About $40,000 Bz would be correct.
Disrespect from legal contracts according to the ACT were behind the
loss of confidence in the CFTZ by investors and the government of Belize
who were deceitful according to investors about what they could do by
law. Under the Constitution, Belmopan PUP ministers in the Cabinet are
legal, because the Constitution gives the Cabinet and Ministers power of
DECREE, or Ministerial FIAT, the laws be damned!
The legislature does not rule in Belize, laws are a mockery.
The government in Belmopan gets about $5 million in income from the
ZONE, but also a lot of aggravation and expenses trying to secure it from
contrabandistas. The employment in the Corozal District has had a good
economic impact though.
EDUCATION DEPARTMENT EXPANDING INTO OTHER DISTRICTS, THAN THE PORT OF
BELIZE CITY. THEY ARE FINALLY TURNING NATIONAL IN SCOPE!
The Toledo District and the forgotten hill villages of the Maya (
about 15,000 people) are getting taught in a five week program, English
as a Second Language. Many Maya are illiterate. Most speak their native
Mayan, and a smattering of Creole and Spanish. More Spanish than Creole,
as their commerce is mostly with Guatemala through jungle trails. There
will be centers in the Toledo District at remote places like Forest Home,
San Antonio, Mafredi, Santa Anna, Laguna, Golden Stream, Indian Creek,
the port town of Punta Gorda ( they don't need it but it has better
living conditions for educators). In the Stann Creek District, the
teaching centers will be at Holy Ghost School in Dangriga, another place
that doesn't need it, but it has flush toilets, electricity and
restaurants for educators. Maya Center, Red Bank, Riversdale,
Middlesex, Bella Vista and Independence. There will be 65 facilitators.
The program is GRANT funded and really the first of it's kind in any kind
of NATIONAL scope by the Education Department. It has been a long time
coming and we hope that many more will be following to remote areas.
LOCAL MIDWIFE AS GOOD AS ANY USA OSTEOPATHIC DOCTOR!
Midwife Audrey Budd, a forty six year old midwife serves the Sand Hill
community on the outskirts of the metropolitan area of the port Belize
City and environs. Budd has an extraordinary ability to turn complicated
births and babies in the womb into the right position for the birth
canal. She does this through massage therapy. In the USA these kind of
births would always be Cesarian. Cut the belly open. She uses herbal
ginger tea to control bleeding and delivers babies up to 11 pounds weight
in this style. 9 lbs would be definitely a Cesarian cutting in
manufacturing countries. She uses soap to stretch the vagina in order to
avoid tearing. Her belief is in natural child birth. People come from
up to a hundred miles away for her deliveries. Locally, she is very
famous. Audry has little education, but has taken courses as an
auxiliary nurse. In her four month training session she delivered thirty
six babies herself. Budd says in the tropical part of Earth, the moon
affects the baby. When the moon changes, at half moon, quarter moon, or
full moon, she will use that period to turn the baby for delivery, by
massaging the stomach of the mother with castor oil. She is basically
self taught and has read many books on her subject specialty. In
tropical belts, the moon effects many things. It is believed in
forestry, it is because the moon fills the cells of tree with sap.
People who cut trees outside of the full moon, end up getting all their
wood eaten by wood lice and termites. People who cut their trees for
lumber over the four day period of the full moon, never have any problem
for over sixty years with their lumber. This is proven scientific fact
in Belize. Even my own experiments prove this out.
MORE SCANDALS OF MONEY LAUNDERING IN THE USA ON A GARGANTUAN SCALE.
MEXICAN POLITICS OPENS THE SCANDAL!
The Emerald Empire in Santa Fe, California was a front for Mexican
money laundering in the USA. Mexican bankers dealt with their USA
counterparts to launder drug proceeds money. The case involved, Banco
Industrial de Venezuela, Banco del Caribe, Internatinal Finance Bank,
Banco Consolidado in Miami and several Mexican banks. One smuggler
earned $2.1 million from the sting operation for testifying and will
eventually earn about $7.5 million. Various Drug Cartels in the USA and
Mexico and South America were involved.
The USA is the biggest money laundering center in the world. But since
they are self appointed leader of the GLOBAL VILLAGE and head of the
Economic War cabals against small financial centers, they themselves
never get blacklisted. They blacklist others but play innocent with a
long list of excuses why they can get away with actions, they condemn
happening to small financial centers. Hypocrisy and criminal intent seem
to rule the day. ( Information taken from the Miami Herald )
SHRIMP AQUACULTURE IN BELIZE NEEDS SUPERVISION. CANNOT THEY BE TAXED
FOR INSPECTORS?
Shrimp farming provides little employment for locals. Shrimp farming
is capital intensive. Shrimp farming can be devastating to the local
ecology. The land is completed destroyed by shrimp farming. The land
becomes polluted and reclamation nearly impossible. It takes about 5 to
7 years before ponds are abandoned. A shrimp farm produces more water
pollution than a city of millions in the USA. Mostly from antibiotics,
pesticides, and shrimp wastes. Shrimp farmers often kill, or poison the
flocks of birds that come to feed. Shrimp farms produce taxes, but
little food for local populations, as the shrimp are for export
primarily. If the exotic shrimp in shrimp farming in Belize ever escape,
local native shrimp may be killed off. At heart of this complaint is the
natural selection process to the local environment, seasonal changes and
diseases that native shrimp have developed over centuries. One shrimp
farm in southern Belize has been quoted second hand, as saying they will
spray with cypermethrin to kill sea lice. This pesticide is also fatal
to lobsters one local researcher points out. ( Isn't research by the
internet wonderful?) Texas shrimp farms have killed off all the local
sport fishing species. Belize exists because of mangroves. Indeed, if
Caye Caulker village do not get a GRANT to plant a three layer mangrove
fringe for their village front, erosion may indeed take the reclamed
beach street away again. Mangroves can function as tall trees if they
are trimmed up about 12 or 15 feet and their roots still protect the
beachline. But cutting mangroves which are pollution filters along the
coast for shrimp effluent is disaster to Belize in the long term.
SHRIMP FARMING AND ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING IS A MUST AND IT SEEMS THE
SHRIMP INDUSTRY SHOULD FINANCE THE PAYMENT OF GOVERNMENT INSPECTIONS
THROUGH A SPECIAL TAX.
BELIZE GOVERNMENT HAS TO CHANGE ATTITUDES!
It used to be you just took from Belize. With a small population and
lots of resources, people were accustomed to taking what they wanted from
the land. With a growing population and intensive reaping of different
economic things for export dollars, the country and land of Belize is
becoming overwhelmed by the exploitation mentality. Conservation, good
stewardship, resource management are becoming every more important to the
future and long term viability of the growing population. The new
attitude is going to be that people exploiting local natural resources,
have to manage it in a sustainable manner and also pay for government
inspection and guardianship. Or pay for for grants to have local NGO's
do it for the government. Either way, the day of just taking what you
want from the country of Belize is over. It is time that political
aspirants face this issue and create legislation to ensure that there
will be a future for more generations of Belizeans.
The citrus waste pond overflow scandal that decimated the river flowing
to the coast recently is one example here. In the past, whatever anyone
wanted to do for export dollars and jobs was okay. But when you get into
longer term sustainability of industry, the citrus pond overflows of the
citrus industry bring out a very valuable lesson. Under the threat of a
$250,000 fine, the citrus waste ponds are now going to be corrected as to
overflow drainage problems. It was the monetary fine threat that did
this and made a local long term industry pay attention to ecological
concerns. While the corrections to the ponds waste problem is good. The
plea for not having money to pay a fine, is not good. It is through
fines, that National Government can teach ecological stewardship of local
resources. The government in Belize has neither inspectors, monitors, or
any other apparatus to make industry conscientious. I think the Citrus
Company should pay some kind of financial fine. Hitting the pocket book
is how you teach lessons.
You ever been jobless, broke and stopped and given a speeding ticket by
a traffic cop? Same theory and lesson. It works!
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