Financial Hardship Overwhelms Available Constituency Resources

Every morning brings a new wave of requests for help, and Area Representative for Freetown, Francis Fonseca, says the money available simply cannot keep up. He says representatives are using every resource at their disposal to assist families facing genuine financial hardship, but the need continues to grow. Now, with the cost of living squeezing households across the country, Cabinet is preparing for a comprehensive discussion on Tuesday. Fonseca says ministers will examine the wider economic pressure on Belizeans, including the allowances representatives use to support their constituencies.

 

Francis Fonseca, Area Representative, Freetown

“Every representative, I think, we exhaust all of the resources that are available to us in support of our constituencies. It’s never enough, you know, every day that you get up there are dozens of requests for support in many different ways and we know that these are genuine needs from people who are going through challenging times. So the reality is that, yes, we do use these funds to support our constituencies. But we will have, as I think the Prime Minister has indicated, we will have a discussion at the next cabinet meeting on Tuesday, about the overall cost of living. We do it every meeting, but this meeting we’ve decided that we will table a paper and we will have a comprehensive discussion and we will look at all of those issues, including the allowances.  So that will be a topic of discussion at this upcoming meeting.”

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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