People who have been hoping to one day become land owners may have that chance very soon.  This is through new efforts by the Belize Grass Roots Youth Empowerment Association, BGYEA, to locate more land for distribution at affordable prices to people.  Today BGYEA’s President, Nigel Petillo, told Love News that those who are interested should attend an important meeting in Belmopan this weekend to learn how they can benefit from this effort.  It will take place at the Belmopan Civic Centre on Sunday morning at ten. 

NIGEL PETILLO, President (BGYEA)

“For those who haven’t been able to get a piece of land at Harmonyville.  Harmonyville have been approached by some owners of some 5,000 acres of land and they are proposing to sell us this land.  However, BGYEA at the moment don’t have 5.3 million dollars, in fact we don’t even know any one individual that have 5.3 million dollars so we’re taking it to the country.  We ;re calling upon the public servants, the BDF, the police course guards, the doctors, teachers, nurses, the BNTU, all different organizations to see how we can pull different resources to acquire this set of land.  We believe it is a wonderful opportunity for Belizeans especially landless Belizeans who haven’t had no land and find it difficult to get a piece of land.  Through this organization we see is possible to those who have no land with a piece of land. I would like remind our general membership that our meetings are held monthly 10:00 at Harmonyville but for this special occasion where we definitely need to ensure that our numbers come out we decided to rent the civic center and in case it rains we have some sort of shelter.”

         

Petillo says that the lands are in a good location, near the community at Harmonyville where BGYEA’s first land project is now beginning to take shape.  The new location, he says is prime location, but he chose not to give the exact point for obvious reasons.

NIGEL PETILLO, President (BGYEA)

 “It’s just in the vicinity of Harmonyville and we don’t really want to give away that point blank location because believe you me when they hear things like this they rush into this deal.  The land is being offered to us just around $1,100 an acre, the land is already property.  You have some big money people around here who would go and buy that and try to profit off of it and sell it back.  Things like this is hurting the Belizean people, it hurts the Belizean economy on a whole. We want to encourage our Belizeans right now to stand with us and see how we can get the attention of the financers or even the government and see how we can partner and acquire this land. It’s just in the vicinity of Harmonyville in the Cayo District.”  

         

We asked Petillo if BGYEA has been able to make any inroads as he had mentioned previously about plans to access financing for its members to develop their land at Harmonyville.

NIGEL PETILLO, President (BGYEA)

“We did meet with a couple people from the credit union as to how do we go about as an organization, as BGYEA to allocate funding for development of our community.  We’re not just talking about the infrastructure and so forth but like housing for our people in that community.  Try to see how we can get the agricultural aspect of Harmonyville off the ground which will then bring back revenue to our community.  Nothing concrete as yet, one of the main issues from these institutions is that they wanted to be as the commentator of these lands.  Now that that has been available to us the government has been facilitating us with our original land documents, the leases the purchases price and so forth and when that is actually completed then we have something more tangible and stronger to approach those lending institutions.  But as an organization such as BGYEA with all our members it’s easier for us to dialogue with these institutions and actually get them to buy into the fact that since we have many members it will definitely work.”   

BGYEA’s special meeting to discuss acquiring the new land is set for ten on Sunday morning at the Belmopan Civic Centre.

LOVEFM