Abner Bacab - who is known to not suffer in silence when he feels he's been wronged - spoke to us yesterday after he confirmed with the Transport Department that he's been wronged:

Abner Bacab, Island Emergency Services
"When I went to pay for my permits, I was issued a black plate. Which, as we know, in the whole country of Belize, there's no ambulance that has black plates. If you're a private, you're white plates."

"If you're a government, they issue a blue plate. But never in the history has there been any black plates. Black plates is for goods."

Jules Vasquez
"But is it consequential? Is the difference meaningful? You still end up with a licensed vehicle, and, you know, you are doing commercial transport."

Abner Bacab, Island Emergency Services
"Well, remember, it's cost me more for a black plate. So the town council charged me more of what I should have paid, compared to a white plate. This is my second and third ambulance. The first one was white plates. It cost me a lot less. I went to the insurance company, and they're taxing me much more because of the black plate. So I traveled to Belize today to meet with the transport department here and present them my case. And I said, that was wrong. It's on called for. You know, it was basically taking advantage of an ambulance service that gives free service to the community. Mr. You know, so they need to give me my white plates, what it is, and then give me back my money that they overcharged me, you understand."

Jules Vasquez
"I mean, how much are we talking about? A few dollars. You run a very lucrative service on San Pedro, where people, you know, we're dealing with people that pay in U.S. dollars. You make tens of thousands of dollars off this, off your investment."

"You could afford to pay the town council a couple dollars extra."

Abner Bacab, Island Emergency Services
"No, no, they can't take advantage of people like that, man. They need to follow the regulations and what the law states, whatever is the cost is the cost. Not because somebody feels that they can charge you more, they will do it. Come on. I mean, if they do it to me, they're going to do it to 100 people more. You know, that's going to be a lot of money, you know."

Bacab says he does not charge local San Pedranos for use of his ambulance service. Currently, there are no public health ambulances on the island, just two private providers.