Former PUP Candidate Lands $33K Weekly City Contract

Former PUP candidate Lawrence Ellis is about to cash in big. His company, Reliable Waste Solutions, just landed a contract with the Belize City Council worth thirty-three thousand dollars a week, to cut grass across the city. Mayor Bernard Wagner says the council has been struggling to maintain over seven hundred streets, and this deal will save them thousands in the long run. But with that kind of money on the table, you can bet this move is raising eyebrows.

 

Bernard Wagner, Mayor, Belize City

“We at the City Council saw we had a problem with grass cutting. This council has done many great things. We have performed pretty well in big things, the e-buses, the amount of cement streets, we have done big things. But it is small little things we have had some challenges. Grass cutting was one of those areas. So, we tried many activities. We have only had fourteen grass cutters employed with us. So we said, let us try to increase it, because we have seven hundred and thirty-three streets. So we sent out a call for cutters in 2022, 23, for fifty cutters. We received two applications. That was down the tube. We tried employing constituency workers where each constituent would employ fifteen cutters. So we had like ten constituents and paid those guys every two weeks, so it really workout out to like fifteen thousand a month for division. So that is a hundred and fifty thousand. And, some of the divisions had like two work teams. So when we looked at it we were paying like two point one million in one year in that program and it was substandard work. The grass was not cut properly. So, Reliable Waste Solutions brought this proposal to us and we looked at it and saw it would save us money. Thirty-five thousand per week. When you look at it, that worked out to one hundred and forty thousand per month. So do the math and you will see we are saving. And now our management team will have oversight to look at the performance of this company.”