DYS Relocates Services to Save on Rent

Kevin Cadle

Over a month ago we told you how the Ministry of Youth, through its Department of Youth Services, has amalgamated youth services providers under one umbrella program called the National Belize Training Institute.  The Gateway Youth Center, the Belize Youth Cadet Corp, the Frank Lizama Training Center and the National Four-H Agriculture Development Center have all been streamlined under the institute to prevent duplication and to make services more targeted and accessible. And now that department has a new home. The ministry has relocated the DYS from its eight-thousand dollar a month home on Regent Street to the Gateway Center on Dakers Street in Belize City.

Kevin Cadle, Director, Department of Youth Services

“The Old Gateway Building is now transformed into the department of youth services. We no longer have to pay those eight thousand dollars again. We no longer have to renovate and upgrade a hotel that is privately owned. Now we can upgrade and develop our own facilities and have an identity.   Including right now we have to find funds to rebuild our record studio – which we paid about twenty thousand dollars to actually build. So we have to do that all over again.   This situation wasn’t only in Belize City; this was also in the districts as well. The DYS was paying almost a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in rent annually and we don’t even want to get into the amount of funds that were spent on restructuring or refurbishing buildings that didn’t belong to the department. Totally, totally unacceptable.”