Email

Print

Turning back to the Acting PM's ministerial portfolio, the press asked about the many land clinics that have been held all across the country.

As we told you, it's a service delivery model first implemented by his predecessor, the UDP's Hugo Patt.

He told us that he hasn't actually been counting, but those land clinics have resulted in thousands of Belizeans getting important land documents that they have been waiting on for YEARS:

Hon. Cordel Hyde - Acting Prime Minister/Minister of Natural Resources
I've not been keeping count. I just try to do as many as we can. Lots of it are people who have had problems for a long time. Last week, we had an internal land clinic at Belize City Lands, meaning, we spent the entire week, from Monday to Friday. We didn't see the public. We just focused on trying to deal with a backlog of maybe 1800 instruments that were there, and we got through like maybe 1500 of them. Since Monday, we have had our people calling people to come for their purchase approvals, to come for their titles. And our people who are making those calls are excited. They cannot believe how extremely excited and happy people are to receive their land papers. They want to take them to lunch. They want to bring breakfast for them. They can't understand, but they're beginning to appreciate what a piece of land, what a house does for people. If we do nothing else, we have to focus on making sure that as many people as possible who don't have, get. And if we do that well enough and do that over a long period of time, then that will be a beautiful thing to have been done."

Reporter
"But and estimation of property documents..."

Hon. Cordel Hyde
"Thousands, mein, thousands."

Reporter
"Tens of thousands?"

Hon. Cordel Hyde
"Not tens of thousands, but thousands, I've not been keeping count. I don't focus on what I've done, and what we've done. I've just focused on what we have ahead of us. So for example, we'll go to Cayo next week to do an internal clinic land there. We have another 1200 instruments that have just been in the backlog for a long time there, even though we've had to 3 land clinics there, spread over maybe eight or nine days. We're going to go back and do an internal one, just to get done all the instruments that we have there. So, I just focus on the work because work never ends. You know, we have to work seven days a week, so it's many thousands though."

Reporter
"When in Orange Walk Central?"

Hon. Cordel Hyde
"[Laughs] The Prime Minister, he must have put you up to that. I tell him all the time. I say, listen when we go to Orange Walk - and we've been there for three clinics. When we go there, his people are still coming to the clinics anyways. They still find a way to get their things done. So, we're saving them for last, just like Lake I."