And Minister Balderamos Garcia also confirmed that the government will be appealing the Supreme Court judgement on Jalacte village lands.
As we've reported, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Jalacte residents, meaning that the government has to pay them more than 6 million dollars in damages for land use abuse. But as the PM has said time and time again, the government is broke, so this hefty amount won't be easy to come by.
And that's why the Minister says they must try to challenge it.
Hon. Dolores Balderamos Garcia - Minister of Human Development
"We no just looking to do so, we will do so. There are some legal issues that arose, even if was just the matter of quantum we must look at an appeal there but I think there are some legal issues at hand which have been discussed and you can depend that an appeal will be going forward but I notice the last time somebody asked well aren't you minister for indigenous peoples' affairs, it's two separate things. We have the Jalacte case which the ruling just came out 3 weeks ago as a responsible government we have to look at those issues but I can assure you that the work of the ministry will continue, we will continue to engage our Mayan sisters and brothers of the south. Again, I have always said we may not always agree but this government is absolutely committed to the implementation of the consent order of the CCJ, it's now 6 years, we can't act overnight but we will try to act a little bit quicker and more effectively than what happened between 2015 and 2020."
