In last Friday’s sitting of the House of Representatives, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Natural Resources Gapi Vega was conspicuously absent from the sitting even though the main event of the meeting was the tabling of the Auditor General’s Report on the distribution of national lands in the final months of the PUP administration. Stann Creek West’s Melvin Hulse emerged as the "Acting Lands Minister" and was supposed to be the pit bull for the UDP’s "expose" but it all fizzled because even "Flippin" was afraid that the Hon John Briceno had the goods on the real shenanigans in the Lands Department regarding the unprecedented land grab orchestrated by the absent minister and his two nephews who hold the key positions of Deputy Lands Commissioner and (Deputy) Registrar of Lands.
Without so much as a squeak from the PSU or a scowl from the Public Service Commission, Messrs Baroni Hernandez and Nestor Hernandez, first cousin and nephew of Minister Vega respectively, received royal decrees from Tio Gapi and summarily took over the land distribution process at the ministry. Since their ascension to these strategic posts, they have set about securing the family’s future as major land owners for years to come. Nepotism aside, evidence has surfaced of the very charges that the UDP tried to raise in tabling the report and in damning corrupt practices: extreme under valuing of crown lands; granting of numerous parcels in a short period of time to nephews, nieces, children and siblings of Minister Vega himself as well as UDP party officials such as Secretary General Phillipa Bailey.
It is a sordid tale that reeks of hypocrisy as lands in Mount Pleasant in Belmopan, Burdon Canal Nature Reserve in Belize City and several areas in Orange Walk are gifted as listed below by the Vega patriarch to his family.
Do not believe for a second that the Vega family is the only one in the Barrow administration making off with the nation's patrimony. There is more, much more, but in the interest of time and space, we will have to leave the rest for later editions of the Belize Times.
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Source: The Belize Times
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