Government addresses Law Reform and NHI roll-out

_{Photo: Prime Minister John Briceño}

by William Ysaguirre

BELIZE CITY, Mon. Dec. 16, 2024

Better access to good health care and a better delivery of justice were two much needed reforms which the Government of Belize addressed by introducing new legislation at the special sitting of the House of Representatives in Belmopan last Friday, December 13.

The government is presently completing the roll-out of National Health Insurance (NHI) in the northern districts of Orange Walk and Corozal, and will be extending NHI to the Cayo District in January 2025, Prime Minister John Briceño declared in his preamble to introduce the National Health Insurance Authority Bill, 2024. The new Act will “establish the administrative framework and other necessary mechanisms to enable the provision of equitable, accessible, affordable and quality healthcare services to all eligible persons for the attainment of universal health coverage; to facilitate people-centered health care that meets the needs of the population; to promote efficiency in healthcare administrative operations; to enable sustainability through appropriate allocation of resources in health care.” The Ministry of Health will work in partnership with the NHI Authority, and the Act also provides for other incidental matters related to this service delivery.

_{Photo: Hon. Henry Charles Usher}

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” explained Minister of Public Service, Constitutional and Political Reform, and Religious Affairs, Hon. Henry Charles Usher, as he outlined the need to modernize our system of law revision, which must be constantly updated as new laws are always being passed. He introduced the Law Revision and Law Reform Bill for an Act to repeal and replace the Law Revision Act, Chapter 3 of the Substantive Laws of Belize, Revised Edition 2020. The Act will modernize the system of revising, consolidating and editing the Laws of Belize. The Act also establishes an official Law Reform Commission to allow for the Laws of Belize to be reviewed and reformed on a systematic basis.

It’s hard for the ordinary citizen to keep track of all the new laws being passed, he pointed out, as the past administration had passed 97 new laws in the years 2008-2012, 82 more new laws in their second term from 2012 to 2015, and another 161 new laws in the years 2015 to 2020. The new PUP government has also enacted 179 new pieces of legislation since it took office in December 2020. The revised and updated laws of Belize must be published so the ordinary citizen may know the law. He noted that the country’s legal framework is in dynamic evolution, and the laws must be changed to take into account changes in the economy, society and technology to remain relevant and effective. The Commission is completing its revision of the Laws which began in December 2020, and will begin a new revision of the Laws of Belize in January 2025.

Minister Usher also deputized for Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hon. Francis Fonseca in introducing a Bill to amend the Senior Courts Act, No. 27 of 2022, “to provide for notices and documents required to be served in relation to appeals from inferior courts to be served by public advertisement.” He applauded the High Court of Belize for the process of judicial reform which is happening to improve the delivery of justice in Belize, and noted that the criminal justice regime sometimes encounters obstacles. The court may sometimes be unable to serve notice to defendants in a case when they have no proper address, nor any other contact information for the accused. The only alternative is to publish a notice in the newspapers and other news media.

The Government has also decided to change the date for when an amendment to the Trade Licensing Act, Act No. 19 of 2024 is to take effect, to allow for the public to become better informed about the scope and nature of the Act. Minister of Rural Transformation, Community Development, Labour and Local Government, Hon. Oscar Requena came under fire from Corozal North area representative Hon. Hugo Patt when he introduced the Bill. As Patt pointed out, next year is an election year, which may not be the most convenient time for the Government to be implementing a new system of taxes. He cited that the Trade Licensing Act would allow village councils and Town Boards to tax small businesses, even street peddlers who might be selling food and pastries, and inevitably, the business owners would not be absorbing the cost of the new tax, and would pass on the additional cost to their customers, contributing even more to skyrocketing inflation. So, even though the Trade License Act has already been approved by the House, it would be inconvenient to apply this new tax before the elections, Patt suggested.

_{Photo: Speaker of the House, Hon. Valarie Woods}

The House also approved a resolution, introduced by the Prime Minister, authorizing the Speaker of the National Assembly to formally request affiliation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and to convey this resolution to the Secretary General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Prime Minister Briceño also introduced a bill amending the Designated Processing Areas Act and a Bill for an Act to establish the International Merchant Marine Registry of Belize as a statutory body.

Opposition Leader Hon. Moses “Shyne” Barrow got more than he bargained for when he asked the Prime Minister to explain “why the price of gas continues to be so high in Belize, despite the fact that gas prices have been falling for more than two years globally.” The Prime Minister took the opportunity to cite the litany of benefits which he said had accrued to Belizeans through the government’s prudent financial management, such as increased basic personal allowances on income tax, which will allow small income workers to keep more of their income. He cited how the government’s investments from revenue have created more jobs, improving the lot of the small man; how the government is continuously distributing land and houses to new homeowners; and how the government increased the minimum wage to $5.00 per hour.

_{Photo: Hon. Dolores Balderamos Garcia}

In response to Barrow’s query about “the process for Belizeans in need during this period of extremely high cost of living to access grocery bags from her Ministry”, Minister of Human Development, Hon. Balderamos Garcia said her ministry has several targeted social protection programs in place to help those in need, such as the schools feeding program, which complements the grocery bag program. She cited the government’s policies which have increased the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth to 6.6 percent, which has cut the poverty rate in half.

Responding to Barrow’s query about “the procurement process for a recently purchased $3.1 million well rig, including who were the suppliers that bid, and who had the lowest bid”, Minister of Rural Development, Hon. Minister Requena explained that both the open tender process and the selective tender process had failed to find a good supplier for the required equipment, because most of the bids cited a cost of over $4 million, and all the tendered bid documents were incomplete. He said the ministry was left with no option but to send representatives to visit several drilling rig manufacturers in the United States, from which they eventually settled on GEFCO Bauer as the best supplier, for a purchase price of $2.9 million, and paid half the price on February 2 this year, and received delivery of the rig on October 16. The drill rig arrived in the country on November 26, the Minister clarified.

The tabling of the Annual Report from the Development Finance Corporation for the year ended December 31, 2023, also prompted the Prime Minister to note happily that the audited report on the DFC’s financials showed that the DFC had made a $664,000 profit in 2023, for the second year in a row, despite reducing lending rates to make loans more affordable for borrowers. He did not waste the opportunity to also cite the $16.6 million profit that the government lotteries have made in the past 12 months, which was $14.1 million or 564 percent more than the past administration used to earn from government lotteries. PM Briceño promised this money would be used to help NHI and to assist sports programs for young people.