Civil Aviation Defends Drone Regulation Consultation Process  

Last Friday, the Belize National Unmanned Aerial System Industry Association accused the Department of Civil Aviation of rushing through new drone regulations without adequate consultation. The association says a workshop held last month to review the proposed rules was cut short, leaving more than half of the fifty-five-page document unexamined and all requests to reconvene rejected. News 5 spoke with the Civil Aviation Director Nigel Carter on Monday; here’s what he had to say.

 

Nigel Carter, Director of Civil Aviation

“Our commitment is at the end of our analysis, provide another draft which will be available for review and another public consultation session will be held. So in a sense, the consultation is not completed as yet. It is just that we had to say, listen, we are at a point now where we must move on. If we were not able to go over the full document with you, then we trust that you understand enough and we’ve shown you enough for you to go over the rest of the document by yourself. Turn it in to us. We’ll review it and then we’ll talk about it again. We expect that by the 30th of June, that we would have completed our editing of the document, contemplating the comments that have come in. Where we cannot change certain aspects of the document, we will provide our rationale so that you’ll be able to understand why we didn’t change it. And where we can make a change, we will make a change. But in the end, do understand that we understand the obligations of the state as it pertains to aviation. And we must always, always keep front and centre that it is a shared airspace. It is a situation whereby drones will be introduced into an airspace that’s already populated by manned aviation.”

 

The association also says a Freedom of Information Act request filed in April remains unanswered, with the legally mandated 30-day response window now expired. Nigel Carter responded saying that the information is still being collected and should be shared “within another week or so”.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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