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We spoke to both sides today.

Arturo Tux Vasquez- CEO, Port of Belize Ltd.
"We lost a week and hopefully we are back to normal now."

Reporter
"In the last few days we know that ships have left without being unloaded. How has that affected your customers?"

Arturo Tux Vasquez- CEO, Port of Belize Ltd.
"Not only our customers, financially there is a lot of loss there. But yeah of course that has affected everything; the business community - everything. From what we understand now there is some ships that were coming that decided not to come over the weekend and everything is simply because we have not been able to give any gurantees as to where we are. It is so unfortunate because the priority here really is to getting the port back up and running and I believe that these things should be considered and dealt with properly. If we are to address a situation like that then we need to understand exactly how we will address that situation. There is no way I am committing the port to say we are 100% responsible. We have to speak to BSI, we may have to speak to government, we may have to speak to a number of parties, but at this point all we are saying is we are agreeing to sit at the table and lets see if and when this happens how would be the best way to address it. That is what we are doing right now."

Reporter
"What the allegation and the point I should say that the CWU president made was that even the labour department headed by the minister was present at Wednesday's meeting and I don't think there was an engagement with you face to face this morning right, it was just an email, so that even the labour officials have arrived at the conclusion that labour officials must be engaged and present now in these meetings for there to be progress because of the way that the port management has been moving. That's the allegation."

Arturo Tux Vasquez- CEO, Port of Belize Ltd.
"I have signed to the line for exactly that."

Reporter
"And you understand that what CWU is saying is that if at any point during this 21 day period that they feel that you act in bad faith they will call off work once more and beyond that that they have solidarity from the shed workers who were out there too."

Arturo Tux Vasquez- CEO, Port of Belize Ltd.
"Again, I am happy you mentioned that, because that is also confusing. The essential services act for 21 days is very specific; if you decide that you will submit the 21 day notice is because you are also committing to not striking before 21 days, so how can you institute the 21 days and in the middle of it say that during that 21 days if I am not happy I will strike."

Reporter
"Sir, let's get back to the basics of what you did sign this morning, what exactly are the contents of the MOU and in your opinion what's the timeline that it's going to take to resolve these issues?"

Arturo Tux Vasquez- CEO, Port of Belize Ltd.
"There is a couple of things: There is the one with the Belize sugar industry moving, there is a 21 day requirement to put an MOU together to decide how you will approach it, in addition to that there is an additional 60 days to do a complete as what it would be really if it should happen. There is 2 other days I think with the staff collective bargaining agreement which has been in place since 2002 and they have requested us to do a review of it. They have submitted their draft to us, we have given them a deadline as to when we will give our counter proposal and there is also a day to say when we will sign a document to ay how we will go through the negotiations. Those are specific dates that we have put and those were the requirements by the staff. There is a separation between the staff and the stevedores. I would imagine that they have advised the staff. In relation to the stevedores, there is no ship schedule, so there is no work for them to do. What I know is that there was a ship due tomorrow and Sunday, but because of the uncertainty, I understand that Hyde Shipping has decided to cancel those 2 voyages. We will try our best to see if we can get them to change their minds, but if you know the loading of a ship, if at this point they were already loaded with the idea to bypass, they won't change it. You load a ship based on where it will stop first, so it's like balancing a plane. It's the same thing. So if that has been done they won't redo it."

Reporter
"So there has been a financial impact on the port. What has been the financial and economic impact this week for the country based on the activities of the stevedores?"

Arturo Tux Vasquez- CEO, Port of Belize Ltd.
"I don't know what that figure is, but yes there has been financial impact, inconveniences, you name it. But that's how it goes and that's why I think it was very important for us to get to a point to get everything back to normal and I think that has been the efforts that we have both been trying during this week."

Evan "Mose" Hyde, President, CWU
"We have a straight line that we need to achieve; that is we need to create a security package in the event which we believe to be highly likely to the point if we are almost certain that's its going to happen, that is the movement of sugar to Big Creek. We have to get that done. On the part of our members over there the shed, the mechanic, the staff - we have certain days when we are supposed to get certain things from PBL. If those things are not done we want to say again to the stakeholders we will end up right here at square one. We have said that to the minister. Just to put it in a nutshell in 2018 when we declared a 21 day notice to strike, that's a very serious thing to do and what we are saying is that the stevedores are operating underneath a 21 day notice to strike and that is not going to be removed and if we notice that when we get to these meetings there is not a genuine sense that the party on the other side is committed to creating the agreements that remedy the situation, we are going to say to Belize and to all the stakeholders, we have no choice, we have lost any belief that we are dealing with a genuine, with any quantity, with a molecule of sincerity on the other side of the table. We know that over the next 20 days there are going to be seeds of division that they will try to sew. They are going to try little manipulation, they are going to try create what really troubles them is that a solidarity has been achieve between the stevedores and the staff. You have to understand that that is historic. When we came back here yesterday evening when they refused to accept and sign, immediately the warehouse and staff said well you best believe first thing in the morning we are going to shut this down and true to word, first thing this morning they shut it down. That is the power of solidarity."

The stevedores began to protest on Monday, March 2, 2020, That strike continued until 1:00 p.m. today, March 6th when operations at the port returned to normal. Still, ships scheduled to arrive at the Port this weekend have reportedly been re-scheduled to head to the Big Creek Port because of the uncertainty at the Port of Belize. That is a rpeort, not yet confirmed.