Nigel Petillo ‘fires up’ Government over logging incursion near planned community

Posted: Sunday, July 28, 2024. 7:21 pm CST.

By Aaron Humes: Grassroots community developer Nigel Petillo appears to have turned some heads in the Government when he ventured out to a road near the Sagana Heights planned community at Mile 36, George Price Highway, late Thursday night, and lit a tire on fire.

According to Petillo, the area has been targeted by loggers who are emptying the forests of all available timber and wrecking the dirt roads in the process. Petillo says he has reported it to the Police, Forestry and Lands departments, without success.

In a live, 58-minute Facebook rant with occasional strong language, Petillo called on authorities to come to his aid, stating: “If they were taking the trees and illegal logging and not destroying the roads, that noh bad…the lee bit a board dehn tek from back yah, noh value the amount of money we have to put into repairing the roads back yah,” which he estimated at almost $50,000, none of which is paid for by the Government.

It appears the appeal worked, as police showed up at about the 35-minute mark of the video and – very peacefully – told him to come in and make a report.

On Friday, sounding relieved, Petillo told Channel 7 News that the word came from on high to assist, with a team of Police officers and Forestry officers arriving on the ground to survey the damage. Far from being “roughed up” as he feared, he said he was treated courteously, but he’s not taking back what he did: “I understand the risk that I took [Thursday night, but I felt that my back was against the wall; I’ve been begging for assistance, asking them to take care of the situation and nobody did nothing, and so I did what I know I can do.”

Petillo separately told KREM Radio News that this is the third such incident at Sagana Heights and that he has linked stolen wood from sister community Emeryville to a Chinese-owned property in Belmopan. But his warnings to the loggers have mostly fallen on deaf ears and so authorities will need to step in.

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