Email

Print

Tonight, we'll look at the concept of a floating pier, which would become Belize's first berthing facility, plus the issue of jobs - how many and when. Here's our final look at Wednesday's press conference:

Daniel Ortiz reporting
The single pier will be designed, they say for minimal environmental impact, supported by 25 piles

Hugh Darley - Bze Project Manager - NCL
"We've got a floating pier system - why floating? Because that is a smaller impact, small foot print - we saw a lot of this in Alaska. When you talk about sensitive waters and where you are, the less concrete, the less structure and the less construction that it takes - floating piers allow us to build it on land and be floated out and put in place; it has minimal amount piles.

The jobs will be created during the building and the project phase:

Colin Murphy - VP, Destination And Strategic Development For Norwegian Cruise Line.
"We're going to be hiring a lot of people, you see in the MOU it talks about up to 25% foreign employment - we would be foolish if we had that much foreign employees because if you forget expats and play on an expat contract then makes no sense economically so it's in our own best interest to make sure we hire as many Belizeans as we possibly can, and we will."

Hon. Godwin Hulse - Chair, Cabinet Investment Committee
"There's going to be projected employment of about 1200 people - the unemployment rate in the Stann Creek district we understand is about 15.3% and in Toledo it's about 13.9% with a country average of about 14.4% - we're going to be knocked up by the opposition for that, but that's no secret, by the time for the next general election we will have it down to 7%."

Colin Murphy
"There will be up to 1000 jobs direct and indirect jobs related to this project."

And in the interim, Norwegian will be recruiting in Belize

Colin Murphy
"So what we're going to be doing is implementing a recruitment program in Belize and focus on the South to commence later this year. We could hire thousands and thousands of new crew, remember we said about all the new ships that we're building. So we can find maybe 8000 new crew members over the next few years, now they're not going to all come from Belize. But we think we can create some great jobs for people and great opportunities for people."

But will they be taking jobs from Belize City?:

Hon. Godwin Hulse
"Any scheduled visits in the North that already exists - those shall not be diverted, simple as that. Whatever was scheduled there will be maintained and then you go to the south - you won't transfer them, so all this fear that everything that was happening in Belize will stop, that is not true."

Colin Murphy
"We couldn't accommodate them so for us it's one ship a day and we think it's only going to be used probably 150 days a year."

And most of those visitors who land in the south are expected to stay on the island:

Mike Singh - CEO, Ministry of Trade
"The idea is to ensure that there is an optimum number of passengers to leave the ship to go on shore but that there's also not too many to exceed what the carrying capacity can handle."

Jules Vasquez
"What is the purpose of having a new destination if we will just have to tender them all over again?"

Hugh Darley
"The destination we're developing at Harvest allows us to create a base camp that allows most of the guests to get off the ship. If the ship has about 4000 guest, about 35% are going to buy a tour, since we're already in a Marine environment, about half of those (1500 or so) are going to take a marine tour from the island which means they get on a glass bottom boat, a day daily - whatever that vessel may be. About a half of those are going to a landside so we have reduced of 100% of the travelers coming off of a vessel like they do in Belize City - having to come first by a vessel then go out on the tours. So you have a low of 150 to a high of 500 people a day that would actually take those vessels into the main base camp and take those other tours."