The gates of the Corozal Free Zone have been shut since March, with its future in limbo as the Barrow Administration did not have any intentions to reopen it. But, the PUP promised to re-open it, and today, they took the first steps to doing so.
The Minister in charge of Enterprise, Jose Mai, along with representatives from the Ministry of Health and Wellness, met with the Chamber of Commerce of the Corozal Free Zone yesterday to discuss the way forward.
Today, Minister Mai gave our colleagues at CTV3 an update on that meeting. He spoke about the importance of reopening the free zones, both as a means of revenue generation and employment creation - balanced against the legitimate concerns about COVID transmission:
Jose Mai, Minister, Agriculture, Food Security, Enterprise
"The timeline will be decided by the business owners in the freezone. The plan was presented ot them yesterday. The plan includes, from what I understand, there are approximately 135 to 150 businesses operating in the free zones, small, medium and large. The plan included OIRSA who will take on some of the responsibilities, some of the spraying, and the sterilization so to speak. They would do vehicles, they would also do fumigation of humans through the tunnel, a walk through tunnel, the vehicles would be fumigated, and prior to entering the zone, temperatures will be checked from the people entering the freezone. There will be also people within the freezone walking and at random taking temperatures from people in the stores. The stores are only allowed to employ? of its employees. After every vehicle is fumigated through the fumigation tunnel, a ticket will be given for a person to enter the freezone. We will have people monitoring if there are persons feeling ill, they quickly inform us and the temperatures are checked and actions are taken right away."
Mai said the cost of reopened operations would be less than $200,000, and that the businesses would split the cost. There is no date set as yet, but this will be high on the agenda at Cabinet's meeting on Tuesday. The plan that we have heard is to push for an opening close to Christmas - but many zone insiders feel that is not realistic.
