Tourism Board launches cleanup, book of stats
You can see them littering virtually every village, town and city, not to mention the highways that connect them. But if the Belize Tourism Board gets its way, Belize’s derelict vehicles will soon be a thing of the past. The BTB is about to embark on a campaign to get rid of the rusting eyesores and educate the public on the need to keep our environment clean.
Henry Atherley, Public Awareness, BTB
” We find that the derelict vehicle issue is the precursor to more littering in a specific area and derelict vehicles are more of a health hazard than other things. We think that by attacking this point of the subject first we will create a new and sustained awareness campaign to start the clean up in Belize.”
Jacqueline Woods
“How will that clean up be conducted?”
Henry Atherley
“What we have done, is over the last three weeks we have contacted numerous local governments and village councils and we’ve ask them to identify for us areas where they see derelict vehicles as a hazard and an eyesore. We also asked members of the public if they have a derelict vehicle that they want to get rid of but have not been able to afford to get rid of it, to contact us. As such, we have come up with a preliminary list of vehicles that we will move within the next five to six weeks. What we are doing, is in conjunction with local government and private organisations, we will move the derelict vehicles to proper dump facilities.”
The clean up is expected to cost half a million dollars. Atherley says they are expected to remove over two thousand derelict vehicles nation-wide.
The Belize Tourism Board has also launched its latest publication, which summarises tourism activities for the year 2000. “Belize Travel and Tourism Statistics,” which is published annually, provides reliable statistics for planning investments in the tourism sector. However, according to Raymond James Mossiah, B.T.B.’s Product Development Officer, the booklet is for anyone interested in Belize’s tourism development.
Raymond James Mossiah, Product Development Officer
“Well we don’t collect all of the information ourselves. We liase with agencies such as the B.T.I.A., Audubon Society and different organisations. The Immigration Department of course and the hotel sector provides us with information. We then put all the information together and we publish the publication.
The publication targets a number of audiences really. It targets investors, it targets the industry to let them know how the different sectors are doing and it also targets the general public to let them know that tourism is a viable option and students often come for information.”
Among the statistics included in the report are tourist arrivals, hotel occupancy rates, visitor expenditures and attendance at selected attractions. The publication is available from the BTB for fifteen dollars.
