NEW SOLAR ENERGY SYSTEM OPENED IN SAN BENITO POITE VILLAGE


San Benito Poite Village in the Toledo District has a new solar energy system. The project took almost a year to complete and uses individual solar panels to generate electricity from the sun s energy. In opening the new energy system yesterday, Prime Minister, Said Musa, told the villagers that their village will be an example for the rest of the world.

Prime Minister, Said Musa:



San Benito Poite will go down in history as the first village in the entire country of Belize that has really moved into the 21st century because you all will be the pioneers of what the future in electricity in the world will be like when we take advantage of the sunlight. We take the power from the sun and we provide it to the people on the Earth.



Toledo West Area Representative and Minister in the office of the Prime Minister, Marcial Mes, explained how the project came about.

Marcial Mes:



The Prime Minister and I cam here sometime ago and he knows the children are going to school and they need light and so on. So him and I spoke about it and he took it up and got some people from Italy to help us with it. The Cuban technicians came, directed by Mrs. Guerra and they are the ones who actually put up the system and they have lights now so they can study and they can do all their homework.



Minister Mes says there have been several other projects for that distant village.

Minister Mes:



The people, the ladies, their children, the men who are traveling through mud and water whenever they go from here to PG and they have to walk in the evenings around two or three and sleep in Santa Teresa and catch the bus from Santa Teresa. It was very pitiful to see these ladies with their children on their backs travelling from San Benito to Santa Teresa to catch the bus at Santa Teresa. So the P.M.(Prime Minister) has been very instrumental in getting over three hundred thousand dollars to build the road. So we have a three hundred thousand dollar road right there now. I've noticed that after (Hurricane)Iris there was no where they can shelter so right away we talked about a school and a community center. So we have a new community center now and a school and now the groundbreaking of the water system took place yesterday and they are on their way now. The school will be having water here, potable water. We have other things coming with San Benito. We have phone.!
The Peace Corps people are here and they are working with it so it's almost there. We have some solar panels that were left over from this project that we'll be using for that.



San Benito Poite was also connected to the rest of the country by a bridge two years ago.

Nice little village, on the BZ-Guate border, on the banks of the Rio Poite, which becomes the Jordan River and then the Moho River. Great kayaking, lots of falls, drops and shutes.