What Will Tugboat Sailors be Charged With?
Chester Williams
The Commissioner of Police also says that the employers are being investigated for any possible breach of the law. But it has already been determined that the five men are facing stiff fine since they did not observe the fourteen-day quarantine period that is a requirement upon re-entering the country.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
“They went to Honduras and they came back, and again, when they returned to the country there are certain protocols that you must go through and those protocols include but are not limited to swabbing and getting the respective clearance again from the different agencies. And so, when they came back they were swabbed and again the procedure is, by law, that you go into quarantine for fourteen days once you get back into the country. And so, after they were swabbed, they were placed back on the barge for quarantine purpose as well as pending the test results for the swabbing. Well it so happened that they could not have waited any longer for the test results and they decided to get off the tugboat and go and see their respective families in Independence Village. That same day the test results came back that they were all positive and so their actions put at risk the entire Independence community and, by extension, the country of Belize. And with that now, the fact that they were told to remain in quarantine, they obviously breached the quarantine requirement by leaving the tugboat and going around in the village as they did. So we are looking at charges for those individuals as soon as they have overcome the virus, that they will be charged for breach of quarantine requirements.”
Isani Cayetano
“Is there a particular charge that can be levied in this case, I mean we know that we have charges for people who cross the border illegally, border jumpers as we’d call them. Is there any particular charge along those lines in this case?”
Chester Williams
“Well, like I said, we will look at the regulations extensively and then we are going to see how we proceed from there.”
