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| San Pedro Daily |  |
Monday,
December 19, 2011 |
| Front Page | Weather | foto of the day | Regional News | Classified Ads |
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ISLAND SUPERMARKET
"Best
Prices
- Best Quality - Best Service"Phone: 501-226-2972 or 501-226-2973 FREE DELIVERY IN
TOWN
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SP Police celebrate end of
year with awards and a party
The San Pedro Police
Department held its third annual Christmas Party which
coincided with its monthly, quarterly and end of year
awards for its officers on Saturday December 10th. The
event, which took place at Fido’s Court Yard, was
organized by Tammy Peterson and senior members of the
San Pedro Police Department. Both events were geared
to the community and department appreciation to the
hard working law enforcement officers.
Peterson explained to The San Pedro Sun that the small party shows the community’s appreciation towards the work that the officers do for the island. “It takes about six months to get the officers on a scheduled day that they will be able to attend the event… As far as the food goes, I had great cooperation from all the neighborhoods and local businesses here,” said Peterson. Peterson explained that it is very important to show appreciation for the officers who often go overlook and their services taken for granted. “They deserve the party! I think that the officers do the best that they can and they work very hard; 38 officer manning a population of 22 thousand speaks for itself,” said Peterson. The police officers got to enjoy a delicious turkey dinner with all its dressings, deserts and cocktails. To compliment the season, each officer got the opportunity to choose a gift through a fun game that kept them entertained throughout the function. It is an annual event that the police officers look forward to as explained by the acting Officer in Charge of the SP Police Department, Inspector Ernel Dominguez. “The community of San Pedro has come together and some of them kept in contact with us and we are very much appreciative for this function. It shows that there are various sectors of the community that appreciate us. Looking at what the show of appreciation does in the longer run, it helps keeps our officer’s moral up,” said Dominguez. Officers for the month were WPC Kendra Thomas for July, PC Trevor Ramos for August, SC Albert Lawrence for September, PC Mariano Cho for October, SC Sedrack Dominguez for November and PC Artemio Chable for December. Officers awarded for the two last quarters of 2011 were Sergeant Ludwig Castillo for the period of July to September and DC Arthur Anthony for the period October to December. Officer of the year was awarded to Oscar Ramirez for his outstanding performance for the year 2011. Special Promotion Award went to Inspector Ernel Dominguez who moved up from being a sergeant in November. Each awardee received a certificates and special gifts. Special thanks goes out to all those individuals and businesses that collaborated to make the events possible. San Pedro Sun Reporter Editorial
If fish come
from riva-battam, an’ tell you Halligata
gat belly-ache, believe am!
Whistle-blowers are invariably disgruntled former employees. But that should not dissuade one from examining the evidence they have to offer. We need whistle-blowers in our society because the information they have to give is often buried beneath so many layers of protection that an outsider could never know what’s going on! We do not accept the popular notion that whistle-blowers are tattlers, or trouble-makers. They may not be imbued with the purest of motives, but if they can provide documentary evidence, as in the recent case dealing with inventories at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, that evidence ought to be taken seriously. During the last PUP administration this country was brought to its knees by people exploiting their official positions to feather their own nests. The country’s resources were squandered in the most outrageous ways. Who can forget the wild abandon with which the Development Finance Corporation (under the previous administration) approved a loan of $30 million to a regional bus company! The loan money was disbursed in full the same day the loan was approved! The clincher, however, was that there was a legal fee accompanying the loan which amounted to $3 million, which was deducted off the top. As was to be expected, the bus company defaulted and went into receivership, but the schemers at the DFC were never brought to justice. The excesses of the old DFC are still being felt today, by people who should never have qualified for loans in the first place, who now find themselves being sued and legally evicted from their homes and businesses because they have been unable to keep up the payments. We are not suggesting that anything so outrageous is going on today, but this newspaper is keeping its eyes open. We will not be brow-beaten nor intimidated by the Office of the Solicitor General when it comes to our duty to report irregular transactions. And we will work with whistle-blowers who have documentary evidence to support what they have to say. Reporter HIVOS pulls out –
We’ll survive, say Belizean NGO’s William Ysaguirre HIVOS has
invested $18.5 million in as many as 20 Belizean
NGO’s over the past 30 years, but the agency,
funded primarily by the government of the
Netherlands, has had its budget cut by a third
as a result of the world-wide economic
recession, obliging it to cut off a future
funding to Belize.
The AIDS advocacy group, Alliance Against AIDS, is one such group. AAA’s Executive Director Rodel Beltran-Perera said it will force them to look for alternative sources of funding. He said HIVOS was unique among funding agencies in that it was willing to provide funds to cover administrative expenses. AAA also gets funding from other donors such as UNAIDS, PAHO and UNICEF, but these agencies will only provide funds to support programmes for counselling, prevention, care and treatment, and will not allocate any financing to cover administrative overheads. Since it is estimated that there are as many as 7,000 Belizeans living with HIV/AIDS, the work of the AAA must go on. He said the AAA is already looking to see how it can tap into other sources to continue providing their services; and, since it was recently announced that the Inter-American Development Bank was financing certain sorts of projects, he was considering preparing a project proposal for a programme to be submitted to the IDB for consideration to access funding. The AAA is not the only group affected. Beltran-Perera said HIVOS had cut back on funding from three years ago. At the time, the AAA had partnered with five other organizations, and together they had submitted a joint proposal for a B-6 project, under which they were able to access about $200,000 a year over three years, but the project is coming to an end this year. Other organizations participating in the B-6 project includeHaven House, the Toledo Cacao Growers Association, the Toledo Maya Women’s Council, the Women’s Issues Network of Belize (WIN-Belize) and Youth Enhancement Services. Caroline Reynolds of WIN-Belize said HIVOS’ departure certainly did not mean WIN-Belize would be closing its doors. She said their organization networks with a number of other organizations from whom they receive financial aid. But the loss of the HIVOS’ funding would mean that they would have to become creative and seek more innovative ways to maximize the use of their resources, to get the biggest bang for their buck. Senator Pulcheria Teul of the Toledo Maya Women’s Council said that HIVOS was one of their first sources of funding back in 2003, but they have also partnered with other organizations such as NICEF and UNIFEM, now called UN Women. Each year other funding organizations take an interest in their work and come to see how they can help, so the Council has been acquiring other funding partners. One such partner, Rivers Of the World (ROW), is involved in helping them build their capacity in producing crafts and other souvenirs for the tourist market, and helping them market their products and better understand the wishes of their customers. The Council is also in the process of preparing a project proposal to access funding from the Global Environmental Fund (GEF). HIVOS has also funded organizations such as BOWAND and SPEAR, and HIVOS Program Officer Susana Rochna was in Belize this week to convey the bad news to the local agencies and non-government organizations that had benefited from HIVOS generosity in the past. She explained in a television interview: “Although we are not a Governmental institution we, HIVOS, receive most of our funds from the Government budget.” She admitted there was very little they could do about curtailing the funding to Belizean organization, but the funded agencies have built up capacities as a result, and that was satisfying to see. The Alliance Against AIDS, for example, with HIVOS funding, has trained a number of people who are right now in high decision-making positions in terms of HIV. The local groups’ capacities won’t disappear just because HIVOS has pulled out, and Rochna expressed the hope that they would be able to find other funds. Budget cuts have also forced HIVOS to pull out of El Salvador and Costa Rica. Reporter
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