Treasury Dept. Says Cut Back, Dr. Zabaneh Says Decorate

A memo from the Treasury Department may have been intended to settle the dispute over office decorations, but it has rubbed Transport Minister Dr. Louis Zabaneh the wrong way. Zabaneh says he took offense to the directive restricting decoration spending and was prepared to ignore it altogether. In fact, he says he has already told his staff to go ahead and decorate the office. So, why is the minister objecting to the Treasury’s instructions? Here is what he told us.

 

Dr. Louis Zabaneh, Minister of Transport

“I had the same reaction when I saw it the same day that we were doing our decorations, and it is absolutely shocking that you would have directive that we cannot celebrate things that all of us as a Belizeans look forward to. The nineteenth is one of those celebrations that all of us Belizeans enjoy. We learned so much from the contributions and experience of our Garifuna brothers and sisters. And of course I am the area representative for Dangriga. We took the opportunity to make it clear that in our office we were decorating and I was happy to assist in that cause. Perhaps it was just something within the Treasury, I don’t know. But I wanted to make a statement to be blunt that this would not be tolerated. Myself, I am the Minister of Indigenous Affairs as well as the area representative and I was looking forward, if it was a genuine directive for me to be called to say why are you putting up decorations. I would have loved to have gotten that call. I have not gotten that call yet and if there is someone that wants to call me, you are free to do so, and we will talk real then.”

 

Zabaneh agreed that the matter has been clarified and settled.

 

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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