Today the Ministry of National Development along with UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, held a workshop examining population, development and migration in Belize. It looks at the impact that migration has on the country and more importantly on developing a national strategy to deal with it. Dwayne Belisle, Economist in the Ministry of National Development explains.
Dwayne Belisle,
"Cabinet has mandated that the Ministry of National Development, Investment, and Culture lead and coordinate a process that will result in a national migration policy. The Ministry has a general mandate to produce a medium term development strategy and the strategy will outline the development objectives of the country over a four to five year period. A part of that strategy is the formulation of a migration policy which will address issues such as migration and social development which will include things such as education, health, and human development and we'll also touch on migration and economic development which should include thing such as the regional integration network under the CSME for CARICOM as it impacts on the infrastructure capacity of the country in terms of how many school buildings we have for immigrants, how many health facilities we have to service immigrants and the local population as well. So from that standpoint I think government would like to have some idea as to how the flow of migrants impact on the delivery of service in terms of our capacity to build schools, build health centers."
The workshop had participation from NGOs and government agencies.
