BELIZE CITY, Fri. June 12, 2020– Although government moved yesterday to relax more of the State of Emergency measures to make way for the further re-opening of the economy, prior to the ending of the Governor General’s Emergency Proclamation at the end of the month, the reopening of the Philip Goldson International Airport (PGIA) remains an uncertainty in a world still gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The re-opening of the PGIA is directly linked to restarting the tourism industry, which has been hit hard by the global lockdown that wiped out the industry’s entire workforce in Belize. Therefore, understandably, the national focus remains on when the country will become accessible to foreign visitors, as many countries have begun opening their economies and are adjusting to the so-called “new normal,” with the novel coronavirus still not yet contained.

Yesterday, on the Ask the Experts government webcast, Attorney General, Hon. Michael Peyrefitte, gave an outline on the thoughts of the Cabinet, in regards to the reopening of the PGIA.

Peyrefitte said, “Everybody wants to know about the airport. Well, the situation is there is no decision yet on the airport. We thought we had come to a decision in the Cabinet and upon getting some consultation with some people. But we decided afterwards to say, look, what we thought would have been safe, based on pronouncements made by the World Health Organization and PAHO and other places, that we could have found a safe way to open the airport and have the airport opened by a certain time, we now find out that some of the studies were not reliable.”

Peyrefitte went on to explain that government could not rely on the testing that is available, which only produces 6 reliable tests out of 10. “That is not a safe way to reopen the airport”, he said.

The Philip Goldson International Airport

“And pretty soon we will come to a determination, more or less, when it will be opened, but we don’t want to give a date just to give a date. We want to give a date when we know for sure we will be as ready as we possibly can to open the airport,” the Attorney General said.
Peyrefitte added, “So the airport remains closed for the moment. The borders — western border, northern border, southern border —those remain closed as well. Flights are not coming in. People are not allowed to break the border to go across or to come in, except for those people who have applied to the Foreign Ministry, and the Foreign Ministry has gotten approval from the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Immigration, National Security, Civil Aviation.”

“Those people must be Belizeans or permanent residents, diplomats, students and the like. So, if you are one of those people, you apply to the Foreign Affairs Ministry, through the COVID-19 website, and the Foreign Ministry takes you to a committee and we decide on who can come in based on where they are coming in from, and what we have to do to protect ourselves from those people or to have those people protect themselves from us once they come into the country,” the Attorney General said.

Feature photo: Hon. Michael Peyrefitte