ONE BY ONE….

Conversations surrounding the state of crime, poverty, and cost of living in any country focus mostly on the duties of the government of the day to ensure the conditions ideal for job creation, accessible education, quality health care, and citizen security are met. Experts across the fields of Economics, Anthropology, and Social Work agree that there is a correlation between violent crime and social inequality. Increases in employment opportunities, income generation, and access to justice can help to stem crime because the benefit-to-cost ratio of committing crimes reduces. There are also many human rights such as housing, education, clean water, and health services that are unattainable for many communities that suffer social inequality.

These conditions evolved over decades of neglect of vulnerable communities. This government understands that the groundwork and foundation must be established to reverse the social inequality that currently exists in this country. Beyond raising of the minimum wage to be more on par with a living wage, they have implemented programs to address the income-generating capacity of women and young people, two or the largest constituencies of this country. Entrepreneurship accounts for 70% of total employment and 45% of GDP which measures the productivity of our country. Efforts have been made through BELTRAIDE which has developed several programs to help entrepreneurs establish, develop, and grow their businesses. They help to build capacity, offer seed capital, and mentorship, and recently have been establishing Digital Connect Centres countrywide. There is more happening through the Office of the Prime Minister with the launch of the “Buy Belizean” campaign, which urges us all to support one another and keep our money home and encourage our entrepreneurs and local businesses. These programs are designed to ensure job creation. However, there is also much being done in education, especially in vulnerable communities like the South Side where already pilot programs for free education have been started. Just this week Minister Kevin Bernard and the Ministry of Health and Wellness launched the National Nutrition Policy 2022-2023 with the partnership of the Ministry of Education, Culture Science and Technology, UNICEF Belize, European Union, PAHO, and INCAP. This collaboration will ensure intersectoral participation as well as the alignment of the policy with broader national objectives, such as the reduction of malnutrition, obesity, and the prevention of chronic non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. Recently, the commitment for a new teaching hospital to be built in Belmopan to serve as an evacuation alternative to the KHMH and to train and build capacity in our health sector has come to fruition. The expansion of National Health Insurance (NHI) coverage to include the Orange Walk district is set to come online soon with an expansion of coverage to the Cayo district in the next fiscal year. This again ensures that more Belizeans will have access to better health care.

Finally, with each new home built and handed over to an underserved Belizean family by the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing, this government reaffirms its commitment to meeting the basic human rights that every Belizean must enjoy. In every sector that will bring benefit to Belizeans, there has been consistent improvement, tangible work that can be seen, and not merely imagined possibilities because your future matters. There are some that still languish waiting for the better that honestly never came. This time around things are very different, the future of every Belizean matters. Each time the programs, policies, and efforts implemented by this PUP Administration succeed it is a win for all of us. Every time one job is created, one child graduates, one more home is distributed, one more Belizean is born safely, and one more child gets to eat a nutritious meal is a win for all of us and it brings us closer to the social justice and equality that we deserve.