And the minister said the biggest challenge was finding land for those first-time owners. But he said they'll get it done one way or another, even though it might end up being costly. But they're hoping to make back up the funds with a tax recovery unit to go after those who owe land taxes.
Hon. Cordel Hyde - Deputy Prime Minister
"That's the big challenge we have, we try to make sure that we provide land for the people who don't have land, trying to make sure that people have access to these lands. If the lands are idle we have to go through the process of trying to acquire lands from people. In the cases where they owe taxes, we are able to get some of those lands in those taxes, we have a few cases like that we're working on. In terms of straight acquisition here people are current with taxes, we have to try to negotiate with people, we are doing that, we have a few places where we are working on that very seriously and we should be able to get lands for people who don't have land, prioritizing first time land owner, that's really our focus and of course costly to subdivide land but we will make sure that we get it done so that the people who don't have land have access to land. We're pushing hard on that, we have a consorted effort on that and we just recently as a government propose legislation in the national assembly to amend the laws so that we have a tax recovery unit where it is an integrated process with the Belize tax service where we are going to go after these persons who owe these tremendous amount of taxes, there's a whole process in terms of how we are able to litigate that. Ultimately it will involve publicizing the persons who have to go to court, whether in the gazette, whether in the newspaper, we're going to go to the courts, we're simplifying the process so that we can make that happen, in the meantime we encourage people to come, so they can pay and so that we can do what we need to do."
