Greenwood warns FSTV of total shutdown

Tom Greenwood

In light of the recent decision taken by the management of the Fort Street Tourism Village, president of the federation Tom Greenwood issued a stern warning that should there be a total shut out of independent operators, legal recourse is inevitable. According to Greenwood FECTAB is not going to sit back and allow anyone to take bread from their table.

Tom Greenwood, President, FECTAB

“FSTV must understand that the day that the operators and guides and everybody else involved, hundreds of people quietly involved and it’s all about taking bread and butter home in tourism, that the day that they continue this kind of behavior and cause us loss; if they think that we’re going to lap our tails between our legs, okay and just walk home and forget it and they’ll sit there with their preferred tour operator and basic people inside there and enjoy it they are going to be looking at the end of cruise tourism in Belize.  We say that very, very easily and very fairly, be warned.  You stop us from making a living, we’re not going to sit there and watch you make that living okay.  You take that warning and you take it seriously and there are legal, aboveboard, quite acceptable ways to that okay.  You don’t have to break the law.  To every crisis there is a solution and to every problem there is a way to settle it.  These are not angry moments, these are moments where we realize that we’ve reached a crossroads with survival.  Survival, that’s what it’s all about.”

David Almendarez

David Almendarez

“Guys we’re heading out of the slow season into the high season.  This is where I’d like to call on the powers that be that we need to dialogue.  We need to look at the system that we’ve been using for the past couple of weeks and improve upon it.  I can say that for some people it’s benefiting but we need to bear in mind that most people who work out of these terminals we are the bottom of the barrel, we’re fighting for the crumbs and for them to be so overly, in my opinion, overly-regulative of the system is sad.  I think this a perfect conduit, the perfect way for us to reach out and dialogue, look at the system and we need to see how it’s affecting some people because we at FECTAB we have noticed even that the taxi drivers, as my fellow brothers have said, it’s not working out and if it’s not working we need to find a way to make it work out.  The hair braiders are saying the same thing, it’s not working out.  It needs to be improved.”