One of Guyana’s premier tourist attractions – the Number 63 Beach – on the Corentyne, Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne), has now become a dumping site.
The Number 63 Beach is now becoming a dumping site
With measures in place to reduce the spread on the novel coronavirus which include encouraging persons to stay at home and not to congregate, the beach is now seldom visited.
More particularly, visitors who originate from the Corentyne visit the famous beach once in Guyana. In fact, thousands flock the beach for Easter Monday activities. Sadly, however, the beach is now becoming a dumping site. Plastic bottles, discarded home appliances, kitchen waste, vegetation trimmings and dead animals are just some of the items which now line the Number 63 Beach.
A larger percentage of the plastic bottles move in and out at the edge of the ocean with every tide.
Plastic bottles line the Number 63 Beach
Plastic can have a negative impact on marine life. Deaths are chiefly caused by the ingestion of plastics, starvation, suffocation, infection, drowning and entanglement. Seabirds that feed from the surface of the ocean are especially likely to ingest plastics that float, and then feed same to their chicks.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday during a media trip to the beach organised by regional representative Gobin Harbhajan, he called out the Number 52-74 Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC) which the Beach falls under, saying the NDC should ensure that systems are in place to prevent the beach from turning into a dumpsite.
“I want to call on the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], they need to come out and see what is happening up here. This is not what we bargained for,” he told the media.
He explained that there is a dumpsite between Number 54 and 55 Villages. There, he said, persons should use to dispose of their solid waste.
“The NDC has not been enforcing this.”
He called on the NDC to act in a more responsible way. According to the official, who also lives in the NDC area, persons who use the beach as a dumping site should be placed before the court.
Meanwhile, this publication also noticed that in many villages which fall under the NDC, scores of plastic bottles were floating around in drains.
When this publication visited the NDC office, it was closed.
