Fisheries break ground for complex building

It’s long overdue, but at last ground breaking ceremonies were held for the construction of a multi complex building to house the offices of the Coastal Zone Management Authority and Institute, the Fisheries Department and the staff of the Meso American Barrier Reef Systems. Vincent Gillett, CZMAI’s, Chief Executive Officer says the centralization of these organizations will help to put a number of activities in place and make the exchange of information between the departments more accessible.

Vincent Gillett, CEO, Coastal Zone Management Authority

“We have had a number of projects and most importantly a barrier reef project, the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System Project, which is coming on line and clearly we have the fisheries department which has always been in existence and we have the CARICOM Fisheries unit which is also here. Now all of those agencies have something to do and have quite a bit to do with the management of our coastal resources and by and large there is a lot of interchange of information between ourselves, between the various organizations and in an effort to try and improve communication, try and improve efficiencies, try and maximize the utilization of the resources, that are resident in all of these institutions, we thought that it would be useful, we thought that it would be practical to put them all together in this one complex.”

The building will be located on the fisheries compound and is estimated to cost one million Belize dollars. Construction should be completed in July 2001.