The Intoxicating Liquor Licensing Act is currently undergoing nationwide public consultations, with a focus to modernize the act and gather recommendations and concerns from license holders.
On Tuesday night, the Ministry of Rural Transformation, Community Development, and Local Government held a public consultation session on the Liquor Licensing Reform Initiative at the Government House. The consultation saw a high turnout of Belize City residents and business owners.
The Director of Local Government gave an overview of the reform initiative:
Clifford King, Rural Transformation Representative
"And so the Government decided through our ministry, which is the Ministry of Rural Transformation, Community Development, and Local Government, that determine and strategically we need to address liquor licensing reform in Belize. And for several reasons. The Mayor highlighted that if you are in a rural area you pay a different fee for your license, there are 13 categories of licenses and many of people don't even know 3 of them, we have things called like malt and cider, and nobody really applies for a malt and cider except for a few, beer licenses, convenience store license, vessel license, members license, public and special, nightclub and then we have to know the difference between public and special and nightclub because they operate the same, bars and nightclubs operate just like just that one has to close 12:00 and another closes 2:00 a.m. but they operate the same right? They play loud music, people are dancing, karaoke, action is there so we really need to address it. When we talk about the Government and licensing system this is a consultation for Belize District but most of the people here are Belize City persons and the people in rural areas, Lord's Bank, Hattieville, they will tell you that there is a board for Belize District it's people from Belize City on the board, except there is a DAVCO representative and they are saying that the issue that we deal with in rural areas are different than the issues we deal with in the city and so they want proper representation."
Clifford King
"So ladies and gentlemen these are the things we want you to poll in on as we talk about this reform tonight. And we are hoping to achieve 7 objectives when we come to the end of the consultation and we make the strong recommendations to Cabinet about what the laws should look like, the new laws."
