More Upgrades Coming to Camp Belizario
While the soldiers will now have a clean and healthy space where their food is being prepared and a place to congregate, this is only one of the buildings that will see infrastructural upgrade. There are still issues with sleeping quarters and bathrooms that are in need of a facelift. And, as we found out today, improvements will be made to several other structures at Camp Belizario which will be facilitated through a loan from C.A.B.E.I., the Central American Bank for Economic Integration.
Florencio Marin Jr
Florencio Marin Jr., Minister of National Security
“We have an unlimited amount of work that we need to get done, the officer’s quarters, the medical center that is in the background, the communications center and definitely the sleeping quarters of the soldiers, the ablutions. All of these things, but they cost resources, so we just have to tackle them one by one.”
Lt. Col. Jermaine Burns
Lt. Col. Jermaine Burns, Commanding Officer, 2nd Infantry Battalion, B.D.F.
“We’ve had visit from engineers from the CABEI project. All the bathroom facilities are cited for renovations of this sort and sleeping areas – there are two sleeping areas and our headquarters building that’s just to the back, that’s a zinc building that we are planning to renovate. We hope that those projects get off the ground by around August/September as that is what the chief engineer from the CABEI project had said. So we know that the funds are secured, we are just awaiting the drafting of all the plans and so on which takes a lot of work. There is a lot of bureaucracy behind it, but I know that it is coming. This is first of the many that we expect to come in the future.”
While there are four hundred soldiers under his command, Lieutenant Colonel Jermaine Burns says that at any one time, there are about a hundred and twenty-five soldiers stationed at Camp Belizario early in the week. After deployment to the borders and other posts, the number drops to about fifty soldiers.
