Today, we also asked the Prime Minister about it - since he was the one who directly called for the forestry officer the last time when he was confiscating Chan's plants.
He said today this one had no problem - but admits he makes such calls all the time:
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"What has been done? What is the problem within government? You have all of these departments and all of them have to be checking and because all of them checking, they keep back business. When it comes to the issue of plants, it has a limited shelf life. You can't keep it out in the sun, because they are going to die, so because of what happened the last time when I try to assist Miss Diani Chan and I still don't know the young lady, I've never met her and I have never spoken to her. What BAHA and Forestry decided to do, they said okay, let's just one person check and so now BAHA is doing the actual checking to ensure that everything is right and that they their CITES and everything. In this instance what I am told that Hugh O' Brien had BAHA certify the truck. I think there were about 2 plants or something that they did not get their CITES certification from the Mexicans, so they were not allowed to bring that in. But then the rest was allowed to and so we're just trying to facilitate to make things quicker."
"For instance, last week, a businessman in Orange Walk called me and he said my truck is parked at the border since Monday and I said why. He said I paid my taxes and I have my receipts and now somebody in the department of the environment has to take that receipt and check with I don't know with which other department to say that it's a legitimate receipt. It seems that in March an employee at the department of the environment was fabricating these receipts, so that the trucks can come in with their products and because of that now the keep him for a whole week. I mean this is madness. So I had to call the minister and I said minister, we just can't keep these, because of the bureaucracy, we need to remove the bureaucracy."
Reporter
"You are saying you rendered the same type of assistance to this gentleman?"
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"I've done that to anybody. Just this morning another person and coincidentally it's a Briceno from San Pablo, no relative of mine, but the person that message me, says listen, our truck is coming and we are afraid that it's going to stay there, will not be able to cross it over, because Forestry have said to us, we don't have gas, so we can't come check you shipment today and he says if we don't clear it today. by tomorrow some of those plants will start to die and then they also wanted to be able to get it in time for the national grounds to the agriculture fair. So, again I called Minister Habet to say and that's when he explained to me how they are doing it with BAHA."
