Sargassum Threatens Placencia’s Tourism Lifeline

Placencia’s beaches are central to its tourism economy, but residents say the growing sargassum problem is putting that livelihood at risk. They are calling on the government to act quickly before the crisis drives visitors away and hurts local businesses. Opposition Leader Tracy Taegar-Panton says the community is not asking for too much. She believes its demand for urgent government support is both fair and necessary.

 

Tracy Panton, Leader of the Opposition

“I think the request is reasonable. We need to be able to understand how other tourism destinations within this hemisphere has addressed the sargassum crisis and what we can learn from those experiences and what they implemented. In Placencia, for example, the shoreline, the beaches are eroded because of the sargassum crisis, but there seems to be, mum is the word, in terms of the technical people coming together and saying lets find the solutions that are implementable in a way that will safeguard the very product that we are trying to promote internationally. It is a national crisis, it is a national crisis, and I will say that tourism is the star on which we have hitched our wagon. It represents sixty percent of our gross national receipts and our foreign exchange earnings. The SIB’s most recent report will tell us that the productive sector is declining, our traditional exports are declining, because the cost of inputs are too high. So it is an imperative, in my opinion, that we do everything as a government and as tourism stakeholders to safeguard the industry because it is responsible for keeping our economy moving.”

 

On Monday, Minister Osmond Martinez revealed that while the IDB and World Bank are willing to support Belize’s fight, it is contingent on the issue being declared a national crisis.

 

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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