The closure of heritage stores in the downtown area of Belize City always grabs public attention because of the rich history that these businesses have, as well as the many experiences that customers share, either traveling to or simply enjoying the sights and sounds of busy Saturday mornings in the Old Capital. So when word got around this morning that Hofius was shuttering its business, there were more questions than answers regarding the unforeseen announcement, after all the store has remained a fixture in the downtown seen since 1892. We begin our newscast tonight with a brief look at the legacy of the company as it prepares to go out of business. Here’s News Five’s Isani Cayetano.
Isani Cayetano, Reporting
Another of the oldest department stores in downtown Belize City is preparing to wind down its business in the months ahead. Since opening its doors to the Belizean public in 1892, Hofius Ltd. has endured as a well-known establishment and landmark on Albert Street. In fact, it was founded by Otto Hofius and Curt Hildebrandt almost one hundred and thirty-two years ago. In 1914, the business became known as Hofius Hardware Company Ltd., before becoming Hofius Ltd. The store remained in the Hofius family until 1960.
Earlier today, it was announced that a decision had been taken by shareholders of the company to close its doors to retail and wholesale business by midyear. This brings to an end almost a century and a half of dedicated service to Belizean consumers. While News Five understands that the property, a prime piece of real estate in the downtown area, will eventually be placed on the market, we note that parking on Albert Street remains an issue for motorists. The Belize City Council has implemented the use of parking meters along that stretch and while it has proven convenient to some, it has deterred others from shopping in that area.
In a release issued by the company earlier today, it expressed gratitude to its employees who have, quote, remained as the backbone of the company for so long, end quote. Hofius also thanked its loyal customers, as well as other proprietors in the business community on Albert Street and downtown Belize City. The pending closure of Hofius makes it the third prominent company on Albert Street, including Augusto Quan, to go out of business in recent years. Isani Cayetano for News Five.
The spanking new Haulover Bridge was opened to vehicular traffic less than a week ago – four days to be exact, and already it has seen its first traffic accident. The fender bender occurred right around the five o’clock peak hour this evening and created a bottleneck for traffic on both approaches of the bridge. The two vehicles were travelling in the same direction, heading into Belize City when one, a red SUV crashed into the back of another SUV – a white one. The new Haulover Bridge, will be officially opened in March, when the railing for the pedestrian walk will be complete.
A case of attempted murder during which Tyrone Scott was robbed and stabbed multiple times in September 2016, is set to begin in April. Elward McKay and Alexander Bainton have been charged with dangerous harm and robbery stemming from the incident over seven years ago. But when the duo appeared in the High Court earlier today when the trial was initial scheduled to commence, Bainton decided to challenge the Crown to prove its charge against him. The matter is being dealt with by Justice Candace Nanton. While McKay pleaded guilty, his alleged accomplice instead challenged the Crown Counsel, resulting in an adjournment to April fifteenth, 2024. In the case of McKay, Justice Nanton reoffered bail in the sum of six thousand dollars, plus one surety of the same amount.
From Punta Gorda, all the way to Belize City. This week’s Kolcha Tuesday dives into the world of East Indian cuisine. East Indians are concentrated in southern Belize, but also thrive in other areas as well. Like Annette Ramclam, who welcomed us into her kitchen to watch as she blends the spices she grew up with in her home with traditional Belizean meals. PG Kitchen, which celebrates its twentieth anniversary this month, has been dedicated to bringing East Indian culture to any Belizean with an appetite. Here’s News Five’s Britney Gordon with the story.
Annette Ramclam
Annette Ramclam, Owner, PG Kitchen
“I don’t go by measurement.”
Britney Gordon
“Just by the feeling.”
Annette Ramclam
“Yes, that’s how my mom teaches so I just keep it like that.”
PG Kitchen, located at the corner of St. Thomas Street and Freetown Road, has been in operation since 2004. The restaurant was started by Estell Ramclam who wanted to share her culture’s cuisine with others in Belize. It was later handed down to Annette Ramclam, one of her six daughters, with a love for cooking.
Annette Ramclam
“The reason why she opened the kitchen is because she wanted to introduce our cultural food and from then on it became a hit.”
Britney Gordon
“So this was originally your mother’s restaurant that you took over?”
Annette Ramclam
“It was. And then before she got sick. She had six daughters. Nobody else didn’t want to take it over. So I left from PG and came over and took it over.”
Britney Gordon
“How long have you been here?”
Annette Ramclam
“I’m here from 2007, but I originally took it over in 2009. From then on, it’s me one.”
Britney Gordon
“So you said that you prepare your culture’s cuisine. What kind of food do you make here?”
Annette Ramclam
“We do regular breakfast, which is Belizean breakfast, but when it comes to the lunch, then we try to introduce our food, which is yellow ginger and our culture. We call it takari. We do different types of greens. We do pumpkin, whatever greens we could get to them at the market. Pumpkin, calaloo, serosi, a lot of people don’t know about serosi, which is something really good. I love it.”
Ramclam explained that she tries to keep the menu rotating with different items everyday so that patrons can get a taste of something different from her East Indian culture on any given day.
Annette Ramclam
“That’s why people come. I never put out a menu for the same reason. Because people think, oh, they got to have this today, they got to have that. When they come, they don’t know what they’ll be getting something different every day, every day. And every day I have to try got at least three or four different meats. Today I will be having regular Belizean cuisine, rice and beans, stewed beans, white rice, stewed chicken, and stewed pork, beef liver, but the special will be yellow ginger chicken with green beans. In our culture, we don’t say green beans, we say yard beans because it’s like a whole yard. This is how it look like. it’s longer than this. So I just cut it up and then we’ll put it in the chicken along with the other condiments and what we’ve done. You could eat it with white rice, but Belizean people love their rice and beans So it’s their choice whichever they want it with.”
Alongside the takari chicken, Ramclam prepared an East Indian side known as Tomato Choka, which is made by roasting tomatoes on an open flame, before chopping and mixing with onions, colantro and pepper and salt. She explained that this side could be eaten with plain white rice and is a delicious meat alternative for vegetarians.
Annette Ramclam
“Majority of our food you don’t have to have food to get a meal. You don’t have to have meat at all.”
Britney Gordon
“Especially with the beans that go into it, because that’s full of protein.”
Annette Ramclam
“Yes and we do the calaloo as well. We do calaloo, we do the pumpkin. Some of the time I would mix the pumpkin in the chicken like that or the pork meat but then other times, I would just fry it down on the side. Because you have a lot of people that doesn’t eat meat.”
Ramclam explained that while she took it upon herself to expand and renovate her business, the Belize City Council reached out to her to rebuild her establishment from the ground up as part of a rejuvenation project with the BTB. She hopes will begin construction soon but until then, she remains grateful for her business as it is, and just hopes to continue sharing her love for cooking and her culture with other Belizeans.
Annette Ramclam
“I won’t complain because in all business you have good days and you have bad days. So I always look forward for the day which is not good, the day which is good, we save what they call a rainy day. The good days, we save for the bad days.”
A life sentence has been handed down by Justice Candance Nanton in a murder case involving thirty-three-year-old Marlon Everett. He was convicted of murder in the shooting death of Albert Johnson which occurred in April 2018. In imposing the life sentence, Everett was informed that he will not be eligible for parole until he has served twenty-eight years in prison. Johnson was shot and killed while he was walking ahead of two other persons on Regent Street. According to the main witness, Everett was walking approximately six feet behind Johnson when he, the Crown’s witness, pushed his hand inside his pants, produced a firearm and handed it to Everett who crept up behind Johnson and fired two shots, fatally injuring him. Despite the murder being captured on surveillance footage, the identity of the shooter was not clear. A police officer was also called as a witness who testified to being able to identify the gunman as Everett, after recognizing him from the footage. Everett’s sentence takes effect retroactively, from April twenty-first, 2018.
In November of 2020, the Belize Communications Workers Union called for former Belize Telemedia Chairman, Net Vasquez to repay every cent that he misused while he held that post at the company. Today, the statement was circulated by the Estate of Nestor Vasquez which informed that they have reached a full and final settlement with Belize Telemedia Limited for the debt owed to the company. Vasquez passed away in April of 2021, but before then, he was accused of mismanaging BTL funds and thereafter resigned as chairman of the company. He also took an undertaking to repay the over eight hundred thousand dollars and had begun to repay the monies before he died. Marion Ali has the update on the final settlement in this report.
Marion Ali, Reporting
He came under fire back in the latter part of 2020 when it was discovered that former Belize Telemedia Chairman, Nestor Vasquez, Senior, had misused over eight hundred thousand dollars of the company’s funds. Vasquez had agreed to repay the monies which he racked up as chairman of B.T.L. The money included more than six hundred thousand dollars in credit card expenses, mostly for his personal use, and a bill for over a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Prior to his death, Vasquez had repaid over a hundred and sixty thousand dollars and made arrangements to repay the balance. But despite that, B.T.L. employees were enraged at the news and the President of the Belize Communications Workers Union, Garry Yearwood told the media back then that its members demanded that Vasquez repay every cent.
Garry Yearwood
Garry Yearwood, Belize Communications Workers Union
“Of course members are indeed upset. We are aware of the audit have been initiated by the past board. I am not too certain if the audit has been completed but membership would definitely want to see a copy of this audit in order for us to have some type of recommendation to put in place. It’s some damning information. Membership quite upset at this point. We did enter into a negotiation the other day for some cost cutting measures where we agreed to give up certain benefits so whatever monies that can be recovered that would be good for our member so that they can get back something that they have given up.”
Net Vasquez
Today, the Nestor Vasquez Estate announced that following Vasquez’s passing, both parties entered into mediation and agreed on a settlement figure. And while the estate says that the remaining balance of this debt has now been fully paid, it stopped short of revealing how much money was paid. It added that the last payment was made on January twenty-ninth in compliance with a Supreme Court Order of 2021. The Net Vasquez Estate was represented by attorneys Estevan Perera and Godfrey Smith. News Five reached out to Smith following the release of the statement but he declined comment. We also tried to get a comment from the BTL Chairman, Mark Lizarraga, but he was out of the country.
Vasquez tendered his resignation as Chairman of BTL in September of 2020 and in December of that same year, resigned from his family business, Tropical Vision Limited, Channel Seven amid the allegations. Marion Ali for News Five.
Today, a Facebook post informed that the ITVET compound on Freetown Road was closed because eleven instructors stayed away from classes after they had not collected their salaries at the end of January. But when we showed up at the institution, we found that while some of the instructors had indeed not shown up, some did and classes were in session for those who were in attendance. The instructors started complaining on Wednesday that the Ministry of Education has not paid them from the start of the school year in September, but they have been getting paid from the school itself. Later on Wednesday, one of the instructors called us to inform that they had all collected their salary for January. The problem with ITVET instructors, according to C.E.O. in the Ministry of Education, Dian Maheia, is a complex one that dates back a while, but that efforts have been made to rectify the problem and that come the end of February, all instructors will start to receive their salary through the Smart Stream system.
Dian Maheia
Dian Maheia, C.E.O., Minister of Education
“It took too long for their contracts to have been signed. In the interim, while theemployment process was going on, the institution supported the instructors by providing them advances. We are at this stage now where we have done our best to rectify. We’ve found out where the errors were, we have found out where the omissions were. We’ve corrected those errors. We have made every effort to support the different people who are involved in this process because it’s not just a Belize City IT-VET process. It’s not just a Ministry of Education process. We have other ministries who are also involved, other units of other ministries, and they have also made every effort to be supportive so that we can correct the mistakes that have happened. Now, where we are now with this process is that they have all been added now to Smart Stream. They’ve been added to the ministries – to the Treasury’s payroll. So they now are going to be paid automatically through the Treasury and not through the school.”
Marion Ali
“So from the end of February, everybody should be paid February 29th on time.”
Dian Maheia
“Whatever day is the payday. So what I expect is that the administration has found a way to keep everything going because I have not been told that there has been any sort of closure or negative impact to the students that are there.”
Maheia informed that there were no classes at IT-VET this afternoon because of a meeting for all faculty and staff.
A second electric bus was scheduled to arrive in country today, ahead of the start of a pilot project to introduce e-buses to the public transportation landscape in Belize. Those buses will be used in Belize City and overseen by the Belize City Council under a project that is funded by the European Union. According to eTransit Startup Coordinator, Neil Hall, the plan is to eventually expand the project by adding more buses to the fleet of e-buses that will be operating in other parts of the country.
Neil Hall
Neil Hall, e-Transit Startup Coordinator
“The funding is coming from the EU, the European Union. The thought that Belize would be a dynamic location to have a pilot project such as this, moving us away from the buses that we currently have which are antiquated and spewing lots of carbon emissions and greenhouse gases and to try out and see if electric buses would actually be a good investment for the country of Belize. Belize City will be receiving two buses, nine meters in length, with capacities of about forty-seven passengers with standees and sitting passengers. Yes, the laws must be amended. While the larger buses will be twelve-meter buses, I’m not sure of their capacity because I’m not a part of the national program and have that information on hand. There are two buses and they will be charged at night and then during the day when they come out, obviously they will not be charging and roughly fully charged and be able to traverse the entire city without having to stop back at the charger and recharge. However, again, being a pilot project, these things are dependent on weather, on how the driver drives, on several different factors, on congestion in the streets, for example, so there might be situations where it’s necessary for the buses to pull in and charge and in situations like that, we estimate that it would be out of service, quote on quote, for one lap, and then would just rejoin like nothing happened.”
Hurricane safety awareness is a year-round endeavor, says the Belize City Council, which recently completed the annual inspections of Belize City’s Hurricane Shelters. These inspections are a necessary part of hurricane preparation, which isn’t reserved for just hurricane season. We spoke with Melony Dawson, the City Emergency Management Organization’s Liaison Officer, for more information.
Melony Dawson
Melony Dawson, CEMO Liaison Officer, Belize City Council
“We had our annual shelter inspection last week. It took us merely a week and this is comprised of a team to inspect these shelters within Belize City. This is to make sure that these shelters are structurally sound. It’s basically to provide safe space for the shelter we use during times of any disaster. What we do is, a team of us, we go out. And this team is comprised of our city engineer, our city planner, we also have our building inspectors, and in addition to that, we do this in collaboration with NEMO, of course, and the two NEMO coordinators, along with the police department, and the fire department, so everyone has a technical part to do whenever we go out to do this inspection and also to make mention we have Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education who assist us as well.”
Reporter
“What exactly are you checking for when these inspections occur?”
Melony Dawson, CEMO Liaison Officer, Belize City Council
“So we go by the National Standards for Emergency Shelters and we basically have to ensure that these buildings are structurally sound, like I mentioned. We want these buildings to be up to standards in the event of any storm. And thereafter, we have to ensure that the, for example, We look for simple things like the windows to make sure they are working well, the doors, they have the proper locks and different stuff like that.”
Reporter
“How many shelters were checked recently across Belize City?”
Melony Dawson
“We did, last week we inspected nineteen shelters and, in addition to that, after the inspection, we do our reports and these are basically findings for each of the shelters we did. We write the report and then thereafter we send it to NEMO headquarters and then from there, they do vetting of the listing and then they make their approval from there and thereafter that is where NEMO published the shelters.”
World Wetland Day 2024 will be celebrated on Friday February second, under the theme, “Wetlands and Human Wellbeing”. The day marks the anniversary of the adoption of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands in 1971. Belize is a signatory of the international treaty that recognizes wetlands of international importance. So, tonight’s Belize On Reel takes us to the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary, one of the two protected wetland in the country. We sought to find out how this wetland is contributing to the wellbeing of Crooked Tree villagers through various conservation efforts. News Five’s Paul Lopez reports.
Paul Lopez, Reporting
The Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary is recognized as a Wetland of International Importance or a Ramsar Site. This protected area consists of over fourteen thousand acres of waterways, logwood swamps and lagoon. This wetland provides a habitat for over three hundred species of resident and migratory birds. It is also home to other wildlife, such as fish, snakes, turtles and frogs. This protected area borders one of the oldest Creole communities in the country, Crooked Tree Village. And, to ensure the viability of this important ecosystem, residents must learn how to make use of its resources sustainably.
Verna Samuels
Verna Samuels, Co-Owner, Bird Eye View Lodge
“Every Sunday I could recall as a child my dad use to go out. We never use to go to the store to buy chicken. My dad use to go and kill a bird and that is what we would eat on Sundays.”
Verna Samuels is the co-Owner of Bird’s Eye View Lodge, an accommodation in the village that provides overnight stays, tours of the lagoon, and birdwatching expeditions for tourists. Born and raised in Crooked Tree, she recalls her father hunting the Limpkin birds, also known as the crying birds. That culture of hunting birds for food has become practically nonexistent in the community. Amanda Acosta, the Executive Director at Belize Audubon Society, and her team, have led the charge in providing public awareness to residents about the importance of this wetland and its wildlife.
Amanda Acosta
Amanda Acosta, Executive Director, Belize Audubon Society
“In the eighties when it was designated, it was designated as a wildlife sanctuary. By law wildlife sanctuary does not allow for extraction. Unfortunately that does not recognize the traditional uses within the community. That community has always fished. So it was areas of contention, contention build up, it came to a head and we were forced to go to the drawing board with the community and government.”
Derrick Hendy is the Site Manager at the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary for the Belize Audubon Society. Hendy understands the traditional significance of this wetland to villagers. He works with residents and schools in surrounding communities to provide education on this habitat.
Derrick Hendy
Derrick Hendy, Site Manager, Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary
“People use it for food. Everytime when it filters out people will catch the fish and sell it. But as I said, there are rules and regulations, people really don’t want to follow the rules and regulations. And, if we continue that way, we will eventually contaminate all of our waterways and it will be much more expenses for us to maintain and even to get drinking water.”
The Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary acts as a catchment area for the Belize River that flows from west of the country to the east and into the Caribbean Sea. The water that flows into this wetland goes through a natural filtration process, removing excess contaminants, before flowing back out into the river. Water levels vary throughout the year, as a result. But, apart from its value to wildlife and naturally purified water, the sanctuary attracts tourism capital for residents.
Amanda Acosta
“Bird tourism is actually one of the main driving tourism reasons for that community. It is what people go there for. If there is no fish, there won’t be any birds, because that is the food for the birds, because that is one of the reasons why birds go there as well. So they are all tightly interwoven as one needs the other.”
Verna Samuels
“The Wetland is what causes the birds, not only the birds, all of the wildlife to be here. Then, in turn that brings the tourists who are bird lovers, nature lovers, so it is like a cycle that if the wetland is here, the birds are here, the wildlife is here, and that attract the business that we want to attract, the tourist.”
At the government level, policies have been developed to govern protected areas that are also traditionally used by surrounding communities, like the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary. Whereas most protected areas fall under what is termed as a “classification one” or a “no-take zone”, Orlando Habet, the Minister of Sustainable Development, explained that given the circumstances, the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary falls under what is known as “classification two”. This permits certain traditional activities.
Orlando Habet
Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development
“We have to understand and realize that their communities that are built around these protected areas and people will have to have their livelihoods, and they will have to fish, hunt and harvest some medicinal plants and do a bit of farming. But, we work alongside them so that all of this can be done sustainably so that it is there for many generations to come. The good thing with the community is that they have realized this also, so they want to do the protection and they want to have their children and grandchildren and future generation to be able to enjoy what is there now and hopefully they can protect it and conserve it in a way that they can use some now and use for the generations to come in their livelihood.”
