NICH’s Forty-Eight Inch Regulation Suspended Temporarily
Yhony Rosado
The B.T.B. announced today that it had reached its one million mark in tourist arrivals in the country. According to the release, one million eighteen thousand seven hundred and five visitors have arrived as of October 2014. Another bit of good news in the industry is that tour operators are tonight breathing a collective sigh of relief, following a decision by the National Institute of Culture and History to temporarily suspend the forty-eight inch policy at Nohoch Che’en. The issue of regulation has been contentious for NICH, since the Federation of Cruise Tourism Associations of Belize, FECTAB, came out swinging last Friday against the implementation of a recent health and safety manual. Today, Yhony Rosado told News Five that they have until December thirty-first to come up with a working solution to the forty-eight inch rule.
Yhony Rosado, Tour Operator, Cavetubing.com
“We have received an email form yesterday we received it late or we would have contacted the media. But Tom Greenwood, the president and ourselves have received a letter from NICH franking that our fight has made it through. So they have give us the amnesty until December 31st. But in the email that we have received said that they will work or whatever, see how they can make the 48 inches part of the book which have been our war. How much are they going to give us is a mystery. We have been at war with NICH and B.T.B. for quite some while now and every time we have to run to the media and running to the media and every time running to the media in the last minute. This has been going on for the past month. We were giving them some time to get their act together and it didn’t happen until we called a press conference and challenged the government and their employees and it is a shame, we don’t need to go there. Those guys could have come to us and say we are doing business or how is it going, they would have known that business have been going down drastically because most family that go on vacation is with kids. So NICH has sent us an email saying they are giving us a little room. From there on is open, I don’t know how they are going to work it out. It is affecting us, 80% in the city and 20% to 30% in the village. If you read the Manuel it states that the book is to enhance work for the immediate communities and if you go by Jaguar Paw there are a lot Tour Guides without a job because we hire them for the guest and for children because they notice we caring for their kids with extra guides. That is why we are popular out there on the websites. So we need to be very smart with our tour guides and or clients. There is something wrong with the book that has been affecting us and it is backfiring tremendously so they are making a halt to the book until they can work something out.”
