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Today Prime Minister Briceno said the issue has been raised in Cabinet.

According to Briceno, it's a situation caused by a combination of factors. He pointed to Santander but also to widespread forest fires.

And since Cabinet's first discussion on air quality, G.O.B has set up a task force to try and address the problem.

Reporter:
"There's a lot of smoke in the West right now. And we went there. We don't know if that smoke is the fault right now of the companies in the area or just mass forest fires, but children are suffering. Have you spoken to the Ministry of Health about what these children could be going through when it comes to respiratory?"

John Briceño, Prime Minister

What we did in Cabinet, the Area Representative Julius Espat for Cayo South brought it up in Cabinet and expressed grave concerns and very upset about what was happening and it's a combination of things. One, Santander has thousands of acres of land of cane. And so when the would burn the field, it creates the smoke.

"But also there's been forest fires, there've been a lot of forest fires been very dry. And so people when they try to clean their land for agricultural purpose and they burn the excess the debris from cleaning out in many instances they're not carefully enough and then that gets away from them. And then we have these forest fires."

"So it's a combination. And yes, the Ministry is concerned, the Ministry of Health and I think they said that they were going to be going out into the area to try to see how bad it is, what can be done, what advice we can give. But we have set up a taskforce with Minister Espat, the Minister of Environment, Landy Habet, the Minister of Health and Minister of Agriculture. Minister Mai. They have set up a small taskforce to take out a first hand look at this and to see what recommendations we can do to prevent this now and also from future occurrences."