The City Constabulary Department of the Georgetown Municipality is currently undertaking a litter bug campaign as the department cites littering as a major contributor to the city being flooded after rainfall.
Deputy Superintendent of the City Constabulary Stephen Bailey during an interview with reporters yesterday stated that the department had been actively targeting areas in Central Georgetown, where littering has been prevalent, since April 20.
He said in light of a forecasted rainy season, the constabulary has placed officers in uniform and in plain clothes at strategic locations across the city to control the situation.
Bailey, who heads the enforcement arm of the constabulary, said that “it has been observed that water has been left on the land after rainfall,” and he suggested that this may have been the result of indiscriminate dumping refuse by persons.
He noted that to date some seven individuals had been placed before the courts for dumping refuse within Georgetown and three persons have pleaded guilty. According to Bailey, while public awareness programmes had been used to alert the public, people do not seem to have heeded calls to desist from dumping refuse.
He said that the department is also targeting businesses around the city, which have been known to employ the services of vagrants to dump their refuse in public places.
While the constabulary has suffered as a result of a lack of human resources, Bailey noted that the unit is equipped to “deal with whatever situation confronts.”
Bailey appealed to the general public, including visitors, to desist from dumping refuse in an indiscriminate manner in and around the city, reiterating that the activity contributes to flooding as well as creating environmental hazards.
