Over the past two days, the Ministry of Natural Resources' highly anticipated land clinic finally arrived in Belize City - covering two divisions, Freetown and Caribbean Shores. It was held at the Civic Center and over the last couple days, hundreds of residents came out.
And today, those from Belama Phase 4 - a relatively underdeveloped area that has its fair share of squatters - came to personally plead their case to the Minister, Cordel Hyde, and their area rep, Francis Fonseca.
And the area rep from Caribbean Shores, Kareem Musa, was also at this carnival of clientelism, ensuring that his constituents were getting the service they needed.
Both Hyde and Musa spoke to us about the clinic this morning.
Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources
"Yeah it's the first official one happening in the city, we've had before but not publicly, like we've done an internal land clinic at the Belize City office where we try to deal with a whole bunch of backlogs a couple months ago, this is the first time that we've actually seen the public and in this first instance, we're doing the residents of Freetown and Caribbean Shores."
Courtney Menzies:
"Do you find that there's as much people as when you're in the rural areas?"
Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources
"Yes, but this venue, it's more orderly, we're in hospitable environment so we don't feel it so much but it's the same intensity, we just had a big meeting with a whole heavy delegation, so we have that everywhere we go."
Courtney Menzies:
"That particular meeting, I saw a lot of resident from Belama Phase 4, is that an area that you're trying to tackle?"
Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources
"Yeah, we have, as you know, we have tremendous squatting in that area, we have in other areas too, in my own constituency, and it's really trying to regularize that situation. In many instances, those persons have lived there for a long time, in some instances it's national lands, but in most of them it's private lands which requires us to negotiate with those lands owners so that government can acquire that land and subdivide that land and be able to help the people who legitimately stationed there."
Kareem Musa, Area Rep, Caribbean Shores
"It has been overwhelming positive, it has been something that the residents of Caribbean Shores have been looking forward to for quite some time now because we see it happening out district, starting out with Dangriga last year, we saw the massive crowds down there and so it's something that our residents have been looking forward to just to address some of the existing issues that they've been having over the years to basically tidy up their paperwork for their respective land so this is something that as area representative, I'm extremely happy, I'm extremely overwhelmed and thankful to the Minister of Natural Resources, the deputy prime minister, Cordel Hyde, and his staff, as you can see, behind us right now, it's an extensive operation, so many different desks offering different services that are so needy and that residents like I said are very appreciative of."
"Perhaps one of the most common issues that we find in our division is the expiration of leases, particularly in the Buttonwood Bay Area of Caribbean Shores so a lot of constituents just wanted to get their leases renewed and to apply for purchase approval so that they can convert their title to freehold."
Minister Hyde added that their next destination will likely be Toledo West, but that that will occur after the holidays.
