N.T.U.C.B. Criticizes Government’s Purchase of $6.9M Private Land

The National Trade Union Congress of Belize is taking the Briceño administration to task over the purchase of a fifteen-acre tract of land to be used as the site for the controversial university hospital.  A pair of documents leaked to the media today shows that the parcel in question was purchased from the Reconstruction and Development Corporation (RECONDEV) in July 2018, for a fraction of what businessman Kenny Zheng is now fetching for the property from a sale to the Government of Belize.  The land, acquired jointly by Zheng and Annie Hong Zu, was bought for four hundred and fifty thousand dollars.  That very same spread is now being sold to the Ministry of Natural Resources for an astronomical figure of roughly seven million dollars.  The umbrella union is up in arms over this recent discovery when it visited the Lands Department earlier today.  News Five spoke by phone with N.T.U.C.B. President Luke Martinez.

 

On the phone: Luke Martinez, President, N.T.U.C.B.

“It’s not about an N.T.U.C.B. position.  It’s not about the government’s position, it is about what needs to happen.  What needs to happen is that the government signed and agreed to a motion, the house and eena di senate to acquire the money to build a hospital on U.B. campus.  So anything other than that we noh di support.  But along with not supporting that, we are finding out a lot of craziness that are occurring.  So this morning in our research, doing our own due diligence apart from what’s in the media, we found out that the government, well we found out that the businessmen purchased the parcels from RECONDEV in 2018 for six hundred and ten thousand dollars.  From 2018, to now, you’ve covered and you’ve seen other outlets covered the condition of the place and surrounding areas, no development and the government is paying six point nine million dollars for something that the business owner paid six hundred and ten thousand dollars for.  So the government needs to explain to the people.  They are coming on the media to talk about their technocrats, but they can’t show who are their technocrats.  So di government just di bullsh*t the people mi bredda.  That is what is happening.”