Senator Smith Tells G.O.B., Stay On Track with Financial Accountability

Today was the last time we’ll hear from Elena Smith as Senator for the Unions. As we have reported, Smith is vacating the seat. Glenfield Dennison of the P.S.U. was elected to replace Smith. During her budget presentation today, Smith noted that if the Briceño administration seeks to remain on track it must ensure that its financial policies are benefiting most Belizeans.

 

Elena Smith, NTUCB Senator

“As we go through and we look at the budget, the budget  speech is titled staying track and so while it is that the government wishes to stay on its track, we only hope that the track we are going to be staying on is a track where we see the majority of ur people benefiting and the lives of the Belizean people will be better based on this track that the government wants to remain on. We must also look at accounting madam president of our finances. Coming here and going through the budget is one thing, but we must have proper accounting of how we spend the people’s money. Reconciliation and auditing will help to account for the monies we spend. If we continue on the track where we are getting an audit report every ten years, eight years then that is not giving us a true picture of where we are, how well we are spending our funds and accounting for those funds. So those are the kind of things we have to ensure are on track so that we as a people and government can say year after year we budget this amount, this was spend this amount, we have this remaining and we can now put this toward something years, and next year we can do better.”