So, while those are a few of the main issues that the environmental technocrats will have to closely examine about the proposed development project at the Port of Belize Limited, several topics emerged during last Friday's consultation that did not precisely fit the rules of engagement.
We showed you how hecklers and persons following other ulterior agendas disrupted the flow of the last public consultation. To ensure that last Friday's conversation was as productive as possible, the organizers of the event strictly demanded that persons ask technical questions related to the Environment and Social Impact Assessment from PBL. That meant that other relevant questions that did not fit that mold were not encouraged.
Our Daniel Ortiz attempted to ask the organizers why they chose to organize a Friday night event, which was most likely to impact the total number of Belizeans who would be interested in participating. Here's that moment of disagreement during the questions and answers section of the public consultation:
Daniel Ortiz, Reporter
"Sir, I've heard persons expressed concerns that the DOE choose Friday night for this public consultation which they don't feel its suitable because..."
Moderator
"Daniel, remember we are trying to restrict our questions to the EIA. It's not a technical question, but regarding to the EIA or the addendum."
Daniel Ortiz, Reporter
"I feel its relevant because the impact of this exercise is to provide Belizeans with the most opportunity to interact with these individuals, learn for themselves and try to get rid of any predisposed opinions which may be wrong. You can't do that if you don't have the type of impact you need and a Friday night consultation doesn't provide that type of access. These people in this room are obviously tuned in, but there are other Belizeans who most likely would have join if it wasn't a Friday night event."
Kenrick Gordon, Environmental Officer, DOE
"I take the point of hosting the public consultation in Friday. I don't know if there is any scientific evidence to show whether you host a public consultation on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday on who will turn out or the amount of people will turn out. For example, we host a public consultation yesterday Thursday for a project down in Hopkins. Guess how many people turn up? Zero. Nobody turned up. The point is we are bound by the law and we ensure that the project proponents meet the commitments under the law. Once we received the information, they have to advertise within 2 newspapers for the public consultation for 2 consecutive weeks. They did 4. We also put it on our website, we put it on our facebook, we try to reach the masses. I understand there is a 87 people here today and I'm sure there is few online. Previously we did public consultation only face to face and covid had taught us to move towards doing this hybrid and while there weren't anyone in the public consultation yesterday, there were only 27 people logged in online. We can only do so much to try to get the Belizean people involved for you all to come out and make a decision on what is happening in your country."
