NTUCB Demands Review of $6.9M Land Acquisition for Belmopan Hospital

In a surprising turn of events, the National Trade Union Congress of Belize (NTUCB) has stepped up to the plate demanding prudency and revision on the acquisition of land for a new hospital in Belmopan.  This morning, Union President, Luke Martinez went to the Lands Department to acquire the documents over the land transactions.  What was found out is that the 15 acres recently bought was sold by Recondev in 2018 for 610 thousand dollars to Kenny Zheng and Annie Zhou.  One other interesting note, according to Martinez, up to midday today the land still had not been transferred to the government.  By news time tonight, however, the transfer papers were sent to our newsroom showing the government as the new owner.

Luke Martinez, President, NTUCB: “And we’re hoping that government hasn’t paid that money as yet because how could you pay for something but the property is still in the business man’s name. That is what this document is showing. Right ? It’s not brother Luke. This is what the document is showing that the businessman still has ownership of the property.”

Reporter: So it’s not too late for the government to redeem themselves, back out of the deal ? 

Luke Martinez, President, NTUCB: “Bullshit my brother. This is what I’m telling you. The government is bullshitting the  people.  But we’ll get to the bottom of where the government is in terms of payment. So we’re heading over to the Ministry of Finance and you’re welcome to join us.”

Martinez did head over to see the FinSec, Joseph Waight, but he was not in office at the time.

Luke Martinez, President, NTUCB: “We need the invoice for the payment, we need the comment for the payment. We need every document from the Ministry of Finance to follow the payment trail. So we need to get to the bottom of that. Where the Ministry of Finance is in terms of payment right ? There is a process that they need to follow so they would create an invoice and make the payment, the Accountant General has to go through her due diligence to approve the payment so I don’t expect that the approval would solely depend on the finance officer here. It has to go through the Accountant General’s Office so this where we need to get that information from; from the Ministry of Finance and the best person to get the answer from is from the Financial Secretary. If he wants to direct us to his finance officer fine no problem we could work with that but the people need the answers. We know for sure based on the documents that we applied for this morning that the Ministry of Natural Resources they haven to transferred those properties in the government’s name. That we know for sure, we’ve established that already. We just need to establish where the government is with that payment.”

Martinez was sent back to the Lands Department as the payout is expected to be made from that end to the two sellers.