The Coast Guard has a new facility on their Headquarters off the George Price Highway, and it was made possible through a generous donation from the United States Government.
The facility is valued at 4.46 million Belizean Dollars, and today, the Coast Guard and the US Embassy held an inauguration ceremony.
We spoke with the Commandant of the Coast Guard about this new structure, which he says will be a multi-purpose facility. He outlined how the Coast Guard intends to use it:
Admiral John Borland - Commandant, Belize Coast Guard
"This is a multipurpose, multi complex facility. You heard many people say it is a boat maintenance facility but it's a lot more than that. That was the initial intent but it evolved and it developed into being a multipurpose, multi complex facility. So now it’s not only serves the purpose for both maintenance and repairs and servicing but also it houses some critical office spaces for the fleet commander, the sector commanders for station Belize City. It burkes which means it sleeps more than 100 people, it has a state of the art conference facility, it has bathroom facilities for all the people and staff that are going to be housed in this building so it's much more than just a maintenance facility. It came about as part of the coast guard strategic planning; it's in the long term part of our plans which is 2015 to 2020."
"We are going to be able to dry dock and completely repair and refurbish not only the boat engines but the boat electronic systems meaning surveillance system, the communication systems, do all the damage control that range from fibre glass work for how maintenance and repairs. Doing welding, there's going to be a test tank installed in here so the engines can be tested right here. There's also a vessel lifting capability where we can lift all our cars and trucks to do maintenance and repair."
"The coast guard was given the approval to grow its forces, its strength to an end strength of 700. We are at 350 right now but we got a point where the forces are growing in size but the infrastructure is not growing in tandem. So we are very grateful that this project came to fruition here today. It opens up a great avenue for development for the coast guard and like I said not only for infrastructure of our maintenance but also for the growth and support of personnel."
We also spoke with US Ambassador Carlos Moreno who told us that this is one of a number of facilities that the United States Southern Command intends to assist the Coast Guard to build along Belize’s Coastline.
H.E. Carlos Moreno - Us Ambassador to Belize
"This is an essential maintenance facility that helps the coast guard and its part of a larger strategy that has been engaged in over the last 5 or so years with our southern command based in Miami to help create assist and build capacity of the coast guard. In addition to the two and a quarter million dollar cost we're building the structure ourselves, we're providing about a half million dollars’ worth of equipment and tools and replacement parts and so forth to keep those vessels in top running condition. The purpose in protecting the shores is to protect Belize which is vulnerable in terms of transnational organisations using the various cayes as protective points where drugs could be off loaded, people could be off loaded. They could be refuelled on those cayes as they transport narcotics from the south going north towards Mexico and eventually ending up in the United States. So that brings a criminal element to Belize, it also threatens the borders of the United States in terms of those types of nefarious activities eventually reaching the United States so over the years we've in partnership with Belize we've invested about 30 million dollars."
He tells us that one will be built in Big Creek, and another in Consejo Shores which will be a joint facility in collaboration with the BDF and Customs.
Email
Print