Committees to oversee distribution of lots

Belize will sign the Inter-American Convention on Corruption and support the revival of the Committee on Public Probity and Ethics in order to implement the convention. The decision at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting follows the Prime Minister’s attendance several weeks ago at a conference on Corruption in the Americas held at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. Cabinet also received a report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the second meeting of the CARICOM Council for Foreign and Community Relations in St. Kitts and Nevis in mid May. Topics discussed included a review of U.S.-Caribbean relations, U.N.-CARICOM relations, the 29th session of the General Assembly of the OAS, the Belize-Guatemala border dispute and candidates for various UN agencies. In order to strengthen ties with CARICOM, Cabinet agreed that the Ministry of Industry and Commerce would carry out a consultation with the private sector and civil society to help Belize implement the CARICOM Single Market and Economy. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development reported that the rehabilitation of Belizean Beach is complete and that the facility will be opened to the public on May 30th. Housing plans for the coming year, including the projected output of the Cuban housing factory and a D.F.C. lending program, was also discussed. And finally, to facilitate development in Placencia, the Ministry of the Public Service will be establishing a post office in the village and designate a site for Cabinet. Following the indexing of available lots in Belize City, the Ministry of Natural Resources has set up northside and southside lots committees which will have responsibility for the distribution of lands in the city. News Five spoke with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Natural Resources Johnny Briceño about the new system.

Johnny Briceño, Minister of Natural Resources

“From the briefing yesterday that the northside and southside lots committees will be enacted and they are going to start working as of next week Tuesday when they will be meeting with the officials of the Ministry of Natural Resources. We have had a problem that over the last three months we have been doing intensive work within the Lands Department in Belize City because a lot of records were incomplete, the indexes, the maps, the filing.

It was really in a mess and it is more for that reason why we have not been accepting payments from people because we want to ensure that what we have here in the Lands Department in Belize is what we have in Belmopan. We have a lot of instances where more than one persons are claiming the land and that is why we have put a halt on the payments. Now that the lots committees are going to be enacted or are going to start their work, we will start receiving payments but we want to ensure that Belizeans are not fighting for the same parcel of land. We are ensuring that all the records are correct and that is one of the reasons why we are stopping or halting the collection of rent on those lands.”