…business entities are not civic and law-abiding – acting Town Clerk
The Mayor and City Council (M&CC) will soon harshly clamp down on litterers by enforcing punitive penalties against them.
Acting Town Clerk Sherry Jerrick
“In our littering campaign, and when it comes to the enforcement aspect, we will be taking measures against them, we will have systems in place to take care of that,” acting Town Clerk Sherry Jerrick told media operatives on Tuesday.
The littering campaign will take into consideration public awareness, public education with a special emphasis to be placed on enforcement.
Lambasting illegal dumpers, the acting Town Clerk noted that garbage build-up in Georgetown is as a result of the non-compliance of commercial businesses.
According to Jerrick, the business entities are not civic and law-abiding and continue disobey the City Council’s bylaws.
“We must take notice of the glaring fact which is on our streets, take Regent Street, which is a commercial district…persons do not have adequate waste receptacles to cater for their garbage, they are not law-abiding, they are not responsible, they are not civic , these businesses continue to have boxes, throwing them on the streets, they do not have garbage bins , if they had that, I am quite certain that one day of non-collection will never ever result in what we are seeing out there on the streets and that is the problem”.
She added that businesses in the city do not have enough receptacles to take off the waste that they generate.
“They are comfortable with dumping those waste on the streets. How can that be the right thing to do? It is not and it must stop. We have got to come together and take concern and care about our environment and about the public health crisis that can come as a result of that… can’t keep the garbage on their premises until such time that clearances are made,” the Town Clerk lambasted.
However, the Mayor Ubraj Narine noted that the new sets of bylaws approved by the Council in 2018 cater for increased penalties to be implemented for those found to be littering. Narine revealed that presently, the Council’s hands are tied since it is awaiting a finalising process to be completed.
“The policy is already placed there, but it has to now finalise with an attorney and so on, the Minister of Communities. These things must run through these other officials so that we can able to have clearance to move forward with it,” Narine said.
Previously, the Mayor had called for the littering penalty fee to be increase from its current $10,000 to $50,000 as part of the new anti-littering law.
“The Council is cash-strapped, and so if persons continue to litter, we will not be able to accomplish anything; we will be going around in circles. Every time we clean, persons will go back and dump garbage… As part of the strategy, we are also considering a raise in the fee from $10,000 to $50,000”.
“I appeal to the public, I am begging to let us work together, to have respect for environment and be able to find a way to deal with this garbage situation in the city,” Narine appealed.
