And keeping it on the subject of farms, we asked Habet about his one - reportedly a few hundred acres in the Valley of Peace area. 7News has received reports that in 2024, equipment from NEMO and the Forestry Department, like a skid steer, a grader and a bulldozer had been seen on his farm working.
Today we asked Habet and he salty denied it:
Reporter
"We know that you have the form of a farm as well, a developing farm, like you mentioned. Have you ever used government assets in the development of this farm?"
Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development
"Never have I used any government assets to develop my farm. My farm is an old farm, so when I bought the farm, it was already developed to a certain extent. I have used my own monies, my savings, my portions of my salaries, and from the proceeds of the sales of the farm to the cattle that I raise on the farm to develop my farm."
Reporter
"So we have received reports saying that they were using different equipment, like hard equipment, from the ministry. And so what would be your response to that?"
Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development
"I don't use equipment from the ministry. I don't think the ministry has any equipment. We use from the ministry, we use equipment from the Forest Department to do infrastructure work in communities. When we got into office in 2020, because we were moving out from one of the biggest flooding events that we ever had."
"And so we had inherited basically no equipment from the former government. And so we got whatever resources we had from the Forest Department. And the Ministry of Infrastructure Development assisted by putting those equipment to use within the Cayo area."
