At the beginning of November, we showed you a protest from a group of residents living in Franks Eddy and other surrounding villages. They were a small group of the 300 workers employed by American tour operator Bradley Paumen.
Those workers are the ones most affected in the fight between Paumen and his neighbour, Michael Modiri. As we told you, Modiri claimed that Paumen was still trespassing on his land to run his million dollar tour operation at the Dark Night Cave system in Cayo South. So, he took the decision at the start of this cruise tourism season to block the road which Paumen unlawfully built on his land.
Now, this road is the fastest route from Belize City, where the cruise guests arrive, to Paumen's Dark Night operation in Central Belize. Modiri insists that Paumen can choose several other routes to get to the caves, but he's ignoring them just to save time because the cruise schedule is so tight.
And time is money, but Paumen doesn't want to pay Modiri rent to us his road, and that's the crux of the dispute. So, while these two are locked in a stalemate, Paumen's 300 employees say they are the one's suffering, and Christmas is less than a month away.
Their protest 4 weeks ago was to get the Barrow Government's attention to intervene and resolve the matter, but that plea went unanswered. So, today, a group of those employees tried it a second time. A few of the protesters granted an interview to our colleagues at Plus TV. Here's what they had to say:
But, as we told you, the Government may be staying far away from this one because the last time they tried to intervene, the Supreme Court gave them a slapdown judgment. The Ministry of Natural Resources, under the then Minister Gaspar Vega, acquired Modiri's land, and when Modiri sued, the Supreme Court reversed the acquisition. Modiri says that Paumen has ignored all letters from his attorney to enter negotiations for rented access.
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