Last week the Belize Tourism Industry Association issued a strong statement calling for, quote, "an immediate moratorium on all mining and dredging activities within the Placencia Lagoon and Ambergris Caye." This follows a joint statement from 14 conservation groups calling for the government to immediately suspend all approval processes for extraction work in environmentally sensitive and protected areas. Cabinet approved the implementation of a 6 month moratorium on the approval and construction of buildings exceeding 45 feet in height and/or greater than 3 floors in Caye Caulker, Hopkins, the Placencia Peninsula, and Sittee River. Today we asked Minister Perez for more details on the moratorium. He says that he is in support of it, and it will require everyone's efforts for it to be effective.
Andre Perez, Area Representative Belize Rural South
"We want to halt it for the meantime because there are several things we need to do. One of the things we discussed yesterday is that all relevant departments must come together and I think that is happening very soon to meet all the relevant departments as it relates to judging as it relates to the beach claiming, people are claiming their own areas, closing off the docks for people so we are doing a comprehensive plan right now that is going to involve San Pedro and Caye caulker and by extension the coasts of Placencia, Hopkins and seine bight. We will have a meeting with all the relevant departments, DOE, mining, fisheries, even health because there are health concerns as well, as well as the DOE has said also Hol Chan is going to be involved the town council as well and myself to come up with a plan to see what we can do. We don't want to shut down people especially on secret beach we have that issue. We don't want to shut them down we want to work along with them but we need to provide the services along with them, there is no water there is no electricity that is no reason for you to be doing haphazard stuff the illegal building of structures in the water, platforms and that is affecting so we have to come together all in one together."
"And that is part of the work we are doing we need to put a halt, we need to put a moratorium. And that was done in cabinet to put a moratorium on docks, high rise buildings we need to put a stop to especially in Caye Caulker. Caye Caulker is very special in terms of the quaintness we want to maintain that and we don't want to make overdevelopment take over that place and we have the high rise buildings over take and we compromise the town so that moratorium is in place right now and by extension we are working on the San Pedro plan to say enough is enough."
