Ministers Figueroa and Heredia Schedule Site Visit on Cayo Rosario
Environment Minister Doctor Omar Figueroa and Minister of Tourism, Manuel Heredia Junior will carry out an on-site inspection of the controversial Cayo Rosario next week. The caye, which is located west of Ambergris Caye and is private property located within the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, will be home to a multi-million dollar tourism project. NEAC has given the green light for the construction of forty-two over the water structures. That approval is not sitting well with San Pedro residents and Minister Heredia Junior has since reached out to his cabinet colleagues to intervene. Heredia believes that far less floating structures should be erected, even if it means that developers will back out of the project.
Manuel Heredia Jr.
Manuel Heredia Jr., Area Rep., Belize Rural South
“Yesterday, the Minister of the Environment and myself spoke and I told him about the concern of the tour guides and the Hol Chan Marine Reserve and we have agreed that next week, we will take an on-site visit of the island, analyse what we supposed to do, what is the maximum that we are supposed to accept because as I told you, I think last week, they believe that the number of over the water structures is exaggerated; it is too much. I personally believe, knowing the island, that if you put those forty-two over the water structures on the island itself, it will not fit over there. So why approve so many over there? And I must reiterate again that I had very little participation in the decision making of the approval of this thing which I believe as the area rep and the Minister of Tourism, since it is a tourism project, I should have been consulted a lot more.”
Duane Moody
“So despite the approval from NEAC, you are saying that your intervention can see maybe the green light being reversed?”
Manuel Heredia Jr.
“Well I cannot speak for them, but what I can say is there is no government that likes a confrontation with any group or any community so in this case that they have threatened that they will go in numbers over there whenever the first pile is being put—that they will go in numbers to oppose it—and that is what I told the Minister of Environment that we must go over there and if we can do our part to make sure that we can avoid this unnecessary thing, then let’s do so.”
Duane Moody
“….even at the risk of losing the project, itself?”
Manuel Heredia Jr.
“Well you know my people come before anything else you know.”
