Minister Fonseca Says Belize’s Missions Abroad Could All Do with More Staff

While we sat with him today, we asked Minister Fonseca about reports that the Belize Mission in Taiwan is acutely short-staffed. The mission is headed by Ambassador Doctor Candice Pitts, and she also travels to Japan to provide embassy services there. Today, Fonseca said that all of Belize’s missions could do with more staffing, and that will be one of the topics that will no doubt emerge when they all meet next week.

 

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Foreign Affairs

“The reality is that all of our missions, ideally, would require additional staff. That is just the reality of small developing countries like Belize. We have to operate small but effective and efficient missions across the world. We simply don’t have the budgets that bigger countries do. So that’s always an issue that we’re discussing: how can we provide more support to our mission. Of course, Taiwan is a very important mission, so that’s under discussion. Next week we will be having all of our ambassadors in Belize for our annual heads of mission meeting, so that’s going to be, obviously, a topic for discussion. All of them are interested in hearing what’s in the budget, how can we provide greater support for them to make sure that they are effectively carrying out their mandate on behalf of the Belizean people. So that’s definitely going to be something we discuss next week.”