Belize Government Pledges $1 Million in Emergency Aid for Fire Victims – Love FM Belize News & Music Power

Tonight, residents of the Toledo area continue to battle devastating wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of thousands of crops, wildlife and over a million dollars worth of property. The National Emergency Management Organization (NEMO) has declared the region a disaster area and has begun assisting residents affected. But as fires continue to grow in rural communities across the South, so too does the extent of the damage. For weeks, residents have been pooling resources and pulling themselves up by the boots on the ground to protect their communities and put out the devastating flames. In light of this crisis, Prime Minister John Briceno confirmed that the government is seeking international assistance to combat the wildfires and damage they have caused over the past few weeks. In an interview outside the House of Representatives, he noted that infrastructure and farmland aren’t the only issues, with families in the South and West also in need of food and other forms of assistance.

His Excellency John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “We realised very quickly that this was not an ordinary fire like any other time, so we immediately declared it a national disaster. So that we could get international assistance. We wrote to the IDB, we wrote to CABEI, and they have all replied saying they will help us. We are using the money from the contingency fund in the budget. We had $5 million set aside for emergencies, this is an emergency, so we agreed in Cabinet that we will use $1 million now, why $1 million? Because we know it’s not enough, but it’s just to get things started immediately, but we know we have to think about food, as of Tuesday, many of our farmers have no houses burned, maybe one or two, but we know that many of them have their farms burned, some have their maize burned. So we are working with the Ministry of Human Development and the Ministry of Agriculture to see what is the best way to be able to do something sustainable and long-term. We want to get them food now, but at the same time we have to start thinking about getting them seeds so that they can replant their crops, and that’s what the Ministry of Agriculture is working on. We know we have to raise more money, but we hope that in a month we will have a clear picture of how much money is needed so that we can have a more well-thought-out supplementary budget so that we can address all of these issues.”