7 News Belize

Stakeholders Angry About New Citco/BTB Plans
posted (March 24, 2017)
For months now we've been reporting on the Tourism Board's plan to move tour guides, hair braiders, and food vendors from their spot just outside the Tourism Village into the Memorial Park. The service providers - who are all local interests - have been resisting it mightily. They say the move will cause them a total loss of business in a year that is already seeing a significant falloff in earnings. Last night the Tourism Board and the City Council had a meeting with stakeholders at the Memorial Park. Here are some of the viewpoints that were expressed:…

Participant
"Who will we pay $300 a month, the money that we make is from hand to mouth to turn over the business the next day. Sometimes our customers don’t buy from us because when we don’t make any money, they don’t want to buy, because they don’t want to owe. So if we have to pay $300 where will we get $300 dollars from. That rent is too high. Its been 14 years I’m doing tourism. This is the worst things it ever get. I have been here for 14 years and it wasn’t like this yet, and we are in high season. So I don’t know how we will pay $300 dollars, we have to try make an agreement so that we could pay. I cant pay $300 dollars."

City Council Rep.
"I understand what you are saying, we base rent on space and location and so you say its high, fine I wont argue with you, but from a method point, we looked at very carefully, it was higher than that because the price per square feet, it was 16 US which is very high."

Participant
"We are impacted intimately by this new system, we are on the ground, we are the one who is there from a daily basis. This is our bread and butter and not just today or tomorrow, we have been here for the last 15 years as stake holders in this cruise tourism industry and so its important that you guys are very careful in the way you bring about this new system because a lot of people are being affected in a negative way."

The meeting started at around 6:00 and went until almost 9:00 pm.

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