Changes expected to town and village boundaries

By Aaron Humes: While not strictly a focus of the re-districting exercise, the Belize Mayor’s Association has discussed plans to revise town boundaries nationwide.

Meanwhile, there are suggestions that certain villages and communities in the South are not actually registered as villages, with three or four such areas affected.

Chief Elections Officer Josephine Tamai, chair of the Redistricting Task Force, stated that these will be incorporated into the national boundary review: “We are aware of those plans as well. So like I said those are information we have to gather and we have to look at holistically. Because this exercise entails all 31 electoral divisions that we have to look at…but those are things that will be considered because one of the other things that we want to ensure, we are going to try as best as possible not to have the administrative districts overlapping. So, we need to look at those and make recommendations based on our findings.”

But asked by reporters how possible plans to potentially make Ladyville village in the Belize District a town affect redistricting (the village is located in the Belize Rural Central constituency), Tamai said that is a matter for the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Transformation as that body is responsible for declaring town and village boundaries. The Elections and Boundaries Department has made its request for information on the number of villages and communities to prepare for village council elections due later this year.

At present, Belize has two cities – Belize City and Belmopan; seven towns ranging from Corozal in the north to Punta Gorda in the south; and more than 190 villages countrywide.

But several of these town limits must be redefined: for instance, clearly dividing San Pedro Town and Caye Caulker; Punta Gorda Town, Dangriga, and Orange Walk.

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