And many ministers are looking forward to their official travels. We see quite a few of them with jam packed travel itineraries. Now, official business is legit - but there's a limit - and the way some of them racking up those frequent flier miles, it gives the public mind to wonder... if Plan Belize was talking about travel plans!
It's caught the PM's attention as well - and today he confirmed what the the Foreign Minister told us earlier int he week, that the Prime Minister is moving now to restrict travel to only essential business.
He said he has told his ministers, "you don't need to attend every meeting":
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"What is happening is that in many instances for instance the previous government did not believe in going to these meetings but if you don't go to these meetings, you don't know what is happening over there. You lose opportunities to get technical assistance or to even get financial assistance for the country. But if you are not sitting around the table when the negotiations are taking place then you get left out so what we have been doing is that we've been going out to those meetings but what I've been of late been telling ministers two things, one that you need to get funding so the government, I think that budget has already been used up and so if you get your own funding you will be able to go but secondly some Ministries in particular travel more than others and I am telling them you don't need to go to every meeting, you look at what are the important meetings the ministry of sustainable development I mean the issues of climate change, you know, and all of these issues that are hot button issues they are having meetings all over the world all the time so I was telling him, you know I was also a minister of the environment and natural resources and I would choose the meetings that I had to go to so that is what I was telling them because whilst we do not have economic costs to Belize you have a utility cost to Belize because then you are not in your office so obviously you can't get all the work that needs to get done on a timely basis."
