And in what appears to be a similar case, Harret Gabb had been leasing a land in Caye Caulker and when he tried to purchase it for his daughter, he realized that the Ministry was trying to sell it to someone in Belize City.
Except, according to the Minister, that isn't quite so. Hyde explained that the lease agreement had expired and while initial payments were paid, they were never completed, so the land reverted back to being government-owned. Here's how he put it.
Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources
"I just got a short report on that last night. So apparent Harret Gabb got this land got this land from government over I don't know 15 years ago, they got a lease. Rememebr this, you get a lease, you're renting the land from govenrment, you get a lease, so you have certain lease conditions. You have to develop the land or you have to pay rental that kind of stuff. But your lease expires after 7 years. Then the account is locked automatically and the land reverts back to government totally. Now you can apply back to renew your lease or you can apply for purchase price. As I recall, that person also got purchase price. He got a purchase price, must have been 10 years ago. I don't think they paid it, if they paid anything, they didn't complete the contractual obligation which was to pay within three years. When you get a purchase price from government you pay a small fraction within the first three months and then you have up to three years to pay the balance. That person never paid the balance so that contract they had with government falls away. The land reverts back to government. Government just recently because of a case where there was some duplication out there, a case that we inherited, because we've inherited lots of these cases with duplications and we have to solve them, and so recently there was a case of duplication where the people were demanding from government, 600,000 dollars in compensation and so it was a case that occurred in Caye Caulker. So recently I approved for them to use that land as part of the compensation because it's government land. So instead of selling it to someone for $2,500, we decided to make that offer to the people who are aggrieved who are demanding compensation from the government and who are due compensation from the government because of the duplication that took place and so those persons have seen the land, they've accepted the land, my last report is that they're in the process of finalizing that so strictly speaking, they got a purchase price, they got a lease, the lease expired, the purchase price expired because they didn't finish paying for it when they had the chance to and so the land is government land."
