Amandala has confirmed that two senior managers at the Belize Tourism Board (BTB) have been dismissed from their posts yesterday. They are Shakira Oxley-Tsai and Lloyd Enriquez.
Tsai has been with the BTB for 17 years and in her time there, she held the posts of Director of Marketing, Acting Director of Tourism, and recently, the Director of Revenue Collection, along with the Registrar of Hotels and Time Shares.
We understand that in her letter of termination, no legitimate reason was given for the firing.
In Enriquez’s time at the BTB, he had held the posts of Registrar of Hotels and Tourist Accommodation, and recently, the Director of Destination Planning.
We contacted Tsai, who told us that she would rather not comment, even though she doesn’t agree with her dismissal. She says that she would rather preserve her integrity and professionalism.
We attempted to contact Enriquez, but up to press time, he has remained unavailable.
When we contacted the BTB, we were told that they have no comment at this time. They told us that they’ve not spoken to any media house about the terminations.
The BTB has had a series of problems – members have been shuffled around and there have been a number of terminations recently.
Two weeks ago, Santiago Castillo, Jr., and Stanley Longsworth, Jr., were both dismissed from the executive of the Belize Tourism Board, “for no good reason,” they said.
Oxley-Tsai was promoted to the post of Acting Director of Tourism during the interim following the departure of former BTB director Tracey Panton.
Michael Singh was moved from the post of Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Tourism over to the Executive Director of the Belize Trade and Investment Development Services (BELTRAIDE).
There is also the lingering problem with the Belize Tenders Association and Carnival Cruise Line. At this time, no official release of a compromise between the two parties has been announced.
The problem has been so serious that a number of ships had cancelled calls to Belize just a few weeks ago.