Mon. Oct. 22, 2018– A month doesn’t go by, (it used to be a week, ten years ago), that I don’t come across someone, man or woman, who throws that question out to me, as happened this morning when the Waste Control truck passed by my home in Buttonwood Bay. It’s a question that continues to bother me, because it signifies that a number of our people are living with a fond memory that becomes a painful regret, and the memory has now become a dream that seems farther and farther away from reality. “When dehn wahn bring back Nova, bass?”, the Waste Control worker threw at me this morning as he picked up my garbage bags, recognizing me as one of the managers at the Nova company he used to work with at Mile 12 ¾ on the Northern Highway.

“I no know weh di go on wid dehn people, bredda,” is all I could offer.

From its inception in Belize back in the early 1980’s, shrimp farming was characterized as a potentially lucrative but very “capital intensive” enterprise. Because of the need for large acres of land and expensive equipment, ordinary citizens like me could not realistically hope to get involved except as an employee in some capacity or another. But the government policy dictated that locals must be trained to take up all the high level posts, so that not only foreigners would hold the high-paying top technical, supervisory or managerial positions. Such had become the case with the largest operating shrimp farm in Belize, Nova Companies Belize Limited, where at one point only the Managing Director was a foreigner; and Nova was, at that time in the latter 1990’s, by far the largest, most successful and profitable shrimp farm in Belize. (Fisheries Department has all the records.)

So, there was no question that Belizeans were not smart enough to learn the business. But with the demise of Nova in 2007 ( a whole story in itself), the fact remained that it would take large amounts of capital to resurrect it – in the millions, not possessed by “small fry” like me; and historically this type of enterprise has not been enticing enough to attract the big local money people who generally prefer the safe avenue of “buy and sell” ventures.

A few years after Nova folded, there was a big hullabaloo about a foreign investor (both major political parties are always singing loud songs about the wonders of foreign direct investment – FDI – which they say is the key to push economic development in small countries like Belize), who had bought the Nova property from the Receivers, and was launching a huge project in Ladyville that would provide massive employment to Belizeans, similarly to what Nova had done for over fifteen years. The song being sung (in June 2012) at the Environmental Impact Assessment meeting held at a high school in Ladyville was about a project called “Sunny City.”  The cries for “bringing back Nova” had been replaced by anticipation for this upcoming project that would see the employment of hundreds of Belizeans at all levels. Unfortunately, some six years plus later, there is no Sunny City, and the grass keeps growing on the modern day “Maya Ruin” of what not loo long ago was the thriving production business of Nova Shrimp Farm.  (Nova was built on property previously the site of the failed shrimp farm, Maya Mariculture of Belize Limited.)

At least one currently aspiring politician was at that Sunny City meeting, but I have never heard a word from any politician towards putting pressure on that “foreign investor” to make good on their promise to invest in a development that will provide jobs for some of our people, who keep dreaming of “the good old days,” as harsh as they seemed at the time because of the strict discipline employed, that Nova represented.

What I always find ironic about the situation, is that January of 2007, when the bottom fell out at Nova, the PUP were in power; but their hands were full with controversies and money quarrels over Social Security, DFC and Universal Health Services loans.  Bailing out Nova was not high on their agenda. In some quarters, certain industries are said to be “too big to fail;” so that governments make it a priority to assist where over a thousand jobs could be saved. But when the UDP became the government in March 2008, nothing changed; Nova remained in Receivership, and the dismantling soon began, with the piece by piece selling off of all the movable assets, the most painful being reports of the tearing apart of the 80,000 pound capacity holding freezer and its sale to Guatemalan buyers, along with the two 20,000 pound capacity blasting freezers. Soon, it was all gone – tractors & trailers, vehicles, harvesting machines, stainless-steel deheading and packing tables and graders, IQF (individual quick freeze) machine, P&D (peal and de-vein) machine, twelve 30-inch diameter water pumps and Caterpillar engines, three 15,000-gallon capacity fuel storage tanks, generators, workshop tools and equipment of all varieties, lab equipment, etc. etc.

To the brothers and sisters who once passed through the work environment at the Nova processing plant or farm operations, I am nobody in this game right now. If you want real answers, put the question to our politicians in power, “Weh di go on wid Nova?  Weh di go on wid Sunny City?”  Belizeans need jobs.