The joint effort in San Pedro to quickly collect and remove tons of rotting sargassum from its shoreline will include the involvement of government, the town council, and the business community there. San Pedro Mayor Gualberto Nunez told News Five today that a public consultation that took place last evening to discuss the problem yielded very fruitful results. He said that the business community has agreed to offer financial support to the council to scale up the extraction of the fetid sea grass from the coast. Because the issue is a recurring and indefinite one, the additional hires will have to continuously remove the sheets of sea grass and dispose of it. There was representation from the San Pedro Tour Operators Association, the Tour Guide Association, and various businesses on the island.

Gualberto Nunez, Mayor, San Pedro Town

"There are long-term plans and short-term plans. But for the long-term plans the Minister had a presentation - which some Mexicans from Quintana Roo came to give a presentation on some different mechanisms that can take place. They also have the boons, they have the pontoons that would collect the Sargassum. Those are options that we have that we can take into consideration. But for now we have the short-term plan, like we had said before, that we as the Council are going to be hiring new personnel so that they can assist us in taking out the sargassum. The business community has also pledged their support to that they can also assist us in hiring more people, more personnel so that we can take out more - we can at least combat this battle that we have every day. What we came out with yesterday from that meeting is that we're going to have a sub-committee. There was also the idea that we can have a sub-committee from different areas, like one in the north, one in town centre and one south of the island so that these sub-committees can work with their areas and have an area where we can dispose of the sargassum."


Channel 5