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Gilbert Gordon - Public Relations - Customs
"What happened yesterday is that the Belize Customs Department was donating $49,000 products that were confiscated when the Customs Department along with the Belize Coast Guard and the Anti-Drug Unit intercepted a vessel on the 23rd December last year in San Pedro. The goods were then forfeited and they find was around $92,000. The Department already collected $45,000. Being that the goods were forfeited, the department is now giving the items to the Belize Defence Force as well as the Belize Coast Guard." "What we did was an official certificate handing over to the Belize Defence Force as well as the Belize Coast Guard and the value of items that was handed over to the Belize Defence Force are valued at $12,000 and the Belize Coast Guard valued at $37,000."

"The items that we have that we are handing over are dicing gears. For the Belize Defence Force we are handing over 4 units of dive suits, 4 units of dive jackets, 4 units of scuba compass, 10 sets maintenance kits and units of pressure kits and regulators and pressure gauge hose."

"In regards to the Belize Coast Guard, we handed over 7 units of Best Divers Dive Suits, 14 units of Myers dive jackets, 2 units of scuba compass, 37 sets of Myers maintenance kits, 16 units of pressure hose, 16 units of Myers regulators and 52 units of pressure gauges with hoses."

"Based on this initiative that we have done; the department had already given donation to other institutions in the past and that's what the department is all about. Whenever we have stuff that we believe can be utilized and can be used within our community that will bring value to the community - the department gives it."

Admirel John Borland - Commandant - Belize Coast Guard
"This equipment comes at a very welcome moment to the development to the Coast Guard. Just a couple days the US Navy Warfare Unit commence dive training for the Coast Guard and we were almost at the point where we were going to rent dive equipment but here we are now with the very best of the best. This equipment will be put to use as early as tomorrow. As you all know the Coast Guard mandate is to provide safety and security of the citizens and hence we do a lot of search and rescue and recovery operations for missing people or people who have drown. From time to time we have to struggle to find this equipment. It's very expensive to come by and expensive to maintain. The good offices of the Customs Department and Comptroller Gibson we manage to acquire this equipment and as you heard earlier this is the result of a combine operation using the joint inter-agency approach where this equipment was confiscated and Comptroller and his staff took a decision that it will serve the country well by donating to the Coast Guard and the BDF, so here we are at the receiving end of a very welcome package."

Lieutenant Colonel Steven Ortega, Deputy Commander - Belize Defence Force
"Presently the BDF does some divers, so this will definitely come in handy to improve our capabilities and capacity and we are definitely lacking it in terms of training, so this will help to improve what we have right now. There is a US team here conducting training with the Coast Guard, so we are likely going to try and piggy back as much as possible on that to improve what we have right now."

The items are valued at forty nine thousand, ninety one dollars. From that, the Belize Coast received 37 thousand dollars' worth of the equipment's while the Belize Defence Force received 12 thousand dollars.