REPORT #362 August 2000
COLLECTION OF TEN SUMMER VACATION DEVELOPMENT ISSUES!


Produced by the Belize Development Trust

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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