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The Belize City Council’s newly unveiled BelCan Bridge design is under fire, as local firm M&M Designs accuses the Council’s consultant Turbo Solutions of copying their 2019 proposal. The project, funded by a grant from the Government of Taiwan, is scheduled to begin in early 2026.The controversy arose after the Council hired international firm Turbo Solutions to supervise the project. According to M&M Designs, the documents submitted by Turbo were nearly identical to their original design, which had been purchased by the government and became its property. As part of standard procedure, Turbo Solutions had reviewed the original designs but reportedly deemed them incomplete and unsuitable for construction or supervision.
Love News spoke with Roque Matus, who stated that he has nothing to hide and is telling the whole truth.
Roque Matus, M & M Designs: “You have stolen my intellectual property. You have plagiarized my drawings, and you have placed it on your title block. That is my claim. This is my life. I did this from I was a young boy until now. I’m 50 years old and all I do is get between and under bridge and above bridge and all over the place and all over the world. Bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge. Right? That’s all I do. Right? You know, I formed the entire company. I made sacrifices in life. I did everything to be where I am and I have the extensive knowledge. I am not saying it in a boasting way But just to finish that story, so because of the lack of a geotechnical test, which I warn the government that they should have done, they threw away 1.3 million dollars. I’m not even getting into the politics of things because I’m not a politician. I just want to be fairly treated and I want this to be, you know, also this case for me also represents something that we engineers have been suffering for a long time in this country. Right? And so I won’t even look at it from a political standpoint. I will leave that for the other people for the work. But the point is that I cannot believe that the evidence are so crystal clear. Right? You know, on every drawing we have a couple, I mean, every time there’s a couple of little errors, right? We have a couple of small errors and even that they copied.”
He also responded to the Belize City Council’s recent press release, addressing their claim that Turbo Solutions had found the original design incomplete and unsuitable for construction or supervision.
Roque Matus, M & M Designs; “The couple things that they have changed has been things that either they missed, right? Because I can see that on one sheet it’s there and on the other sheet it’s not there, you know? Or two, the things that they say they have enhanced has not met the AASHTO standards. And I’ll give you another example, They have the same geometry of our pile caps, the same outcome on couple of piles of our pile caps, the same reinforcement, everything exact, except the embedment of the pile. The pile goes in one foot into the pile cap,that’s an AASHTO standard. And I will quote the AASHTO code and the number and all of that. They have it embedded three inches into the pile cap. So that’s not to the standard, right? And so those are the little things that they have changed here and there, but they have not met the standard. So how can you say that you’re drawing is superior here and the worst thing is that the city council because of their lack of experience if they wanted to look at my drawing right and discuss it they should have put me in contact with this company so we go to a peer review a proper peer review but at no time this company could have hijacked my drawing or should have hijacked my drawing and use it as their own.”
With the BelCan Bridge project valued at a substantial $800,000 USD and backed by international funding, the stakes are high for all parties involved. While the Belize City Council pushes ahead with its timeline, the dispute over design ownership and professional integrity continues to raise concerns. As M&M Designs defends its work and Roque Matus insists on full transparency, the public now watches closely to see whether the bridge to progress will also become a battleground for accountability.
English (US) ·