NTUCB Responds to PM Briceño on Stake Bank

The National Trade Union Congress of Belize has received a response from the Office of the Prime Minister regarding the compulsory acquisition of the Stake Bank Island Extension.  Prime Minister John Briceño, in his written response, told the umbrella organization that the decision to compulsorily acquire the properties in question was carefully considered.  But the N.T.U.C.B. is not entirely convinced.  Here’s Union Senator Glenfield Dennison with the N.T.U.C.B.’s position on the matter.

 

Glenfield Dennison, Union Senator

“I would say it’s rooted really in the constitutional protection of arbitrary deprivation of property.  Inherent in that would be that you can reasonably take away someone’s property.  The methodology that the government chose to use is what we are trying to do our part as social partners to highlight to the government.  This is not a criticism of the government as such.  This is us looking through our lens and saying, hey there are two pieces of legislation on the law books, over seventy-five years old.  The acquisition of property exists, to me, at the intersection between the private interest of the Feinsteins, the commercial interests of the receiver and the government in its responsibility to the public.  As we’re trying to unpack that, we can see that there definitely will be a lawsuit and I won’t comment about the lawsuit itself, but insofar as the two pieces of legislation that exist for acquiring land, it’s important that they both achieve the same thing, the compulsory acquisition of private lands, but they vest that ownership in two different places.  So under the promoters legislation, it would vest the compulsorily acquired land in the private entity, but in the public purposes acquisitions act, it vests the interest in the government.”