7 News Belize

A Sargassum Solution
posted (October 31, 2018)
4 weeks ago, we told you about the massive clean-up effort which the community of San Pedro and the San Pedro Town Council had to organize when the island's beachfront became overrun by sargassum.

As Belize's premier tourist destination, San Pedro could not afford to have the seaweed infestation to drive away the tourists who were vacationing there. It's a huge eyesore, and rather than wait for Central Government to help them remedy the problem, they took matters into their own hands.

Well, in the weeks that followed, a Sargassum Task Force, made up of several different government agencies, began looking at the situation, and they found out that sargassum had also overtaken the beachfronts of Caye Caulker, Placencia, and Hopkins. That could be a disaster since these are all tourist destinations within the country, and so, the Ministry of Tourism has come up with a short-term plan to mitigate against it.

Today, the Director of Tourism and the Minister of Tourism held a press conference to announce this plan, which will include the government give funding of 1.2 million dollars. Also, the BTB will forego their collection of about 2.2 million dollars in hotel taxes, which the hoteliers will be able to use to address the sargassum problem on their properties immediately.

Here's how they explained it to us:

The Tourism Minister noted today that Belize fortunate that the washing up of the sargassum was caught this early. He says that there are Caribbean nations who have had to close some of their beaches because the infestation has been so bad.

The Ministry intends to work with the Embassy of Finland, so that experts from that country could possibly advise Belizeans on a more permanent fix to address the problem before next year's tourism high season.

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