Corozal Free Zone to Reopen for Business on February 1st

Minister Mai confirmed to News Five that cabinet decided that the Corozal Free Zone will be reopened on February first.  Its reopening was one of the manifesto promises of the party.  The free zone had been closed for almost a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and thousands of persons became unemployed in the north.  Initially, the free zone should have reopened before the Christmas holidays, but that did not materialize.  This was because the Corozal Chamber of Commerce, which consists of business owners from within the zone, was unwilling to pay for the costs of retrofitting for sanitization measures - a bill of a little over one hundred thousand dollars. Minister Mai says that a task force to ensure minimum risks has been created.

Jose Mai, Minister of Enterprise

"This gives the investors and the free zone management time to prepare all the facilities, the measures the structures in place that would ensure that people are safe in the free zone. This means that OIRSA will be doing a part of the sanitation. They will be doing the spraying of vehicles, the walk-in tunnels where you walk through. There will be people checking temperatures before they get in. and every store has to be well prepared with wash hands, soaps and all these gels that they use that will prevent the disease from being spread or people to get infested with the virus."

Channel 5

Date Set For Free Zone Opening

From before the general election, one of the PUP's campaign promises was to re-open the free zone which had been forced closed due to COVID concerns coming over from Mexico.

And now a date has been set. 7News has since received a copy of a letter that the CEO of the Free Zone has sent to the business owners in the zone. In it, the CEO says, that the Government has decided that the Zone will open on February 1st.

That letter says, quote, "Cabinet has agreed that the Corozal Free Zone would resume operations on February 1st, 2021… Kindly be advised to finalize all arrangements and preparations to meet health department standards and regulations. Clearance from the Health Inspector is a prerequisite for any company wishing to resume operations." End quote.

Today, our colleagues from CTV3 News got a teleconference interview with the Vice-Chairman of the Free Zone's Board of Directors. Here's what he had to about the health and safety features that will be installed to prepare for the Zone's opening during the COVID-19 pandemic:

Anil Hotchandani, Vice Chair - BOD - Corozal Free Zone
"Government had made a election promise that they will open the free zone and they are true to their promise. They have started to even before the opening of the free zone they had built an approach road which was badly needed. Besides that they are putting in place safety protocols, because that has been the number one point of concern for them that they want to open the zone but they want it to be a safe area. We don't want the pandemic to spread. Safety protocols are being put in place with the direction of the ministry of health. All the stores have certain protocols that they need to accomplish by putting wash basins, putting hand sanitizers, wearing of the mask that's going to be very important, plus the CEO of the free zone and the chairman - they almost completed the building of the sanitizing tunnels where people will be walking through. These are all the things that are happening. All the businesses needs to clean up their stores and meet all those requirements. They will be inspected by the health inspector and once they are in compliant they will be allowed to open."

According to Hotchandani, the Management of the Free Zone and the business have arrived at an agreement on how the costs for these new safety features will be covered.

Channel 7