The Mayor and City Coun-cil (M&CC) has embarked on a ‘name and shame’ anti-littering campaign as it steps up its efforts to restore Georgetown’s ‘Garden City’ status.
According to Public Relations Officer of the M&CC Debra Lewis, the council started the ‘name and shame’ campaign on Tuesday to raise awareness and to help keep the city clean. She said there are currently seven Consta-bulary Officers who roam the streets of Georgetown, especially around the Lacytown and Bourda areas, looking for anyone who litters or dumps trash. Persons caught littering are arrested by the officers and taken to City Hall, where they are given a lecture by Lewis and charged.
“We let them know that we have to take their pictures because the council is working so hard to clean the city and it’s counterproductive when people are littering everywhere,” Lewis told Stabroek News yesterday, while stating that the images and names of persons will be distributed to the media for publication.
“Sometimes people come out early and sometimes they wait until it’s late to dump their garbage and because of that,” she said, the officers would be patrolling various areas at different times to catch litterbugs in the act.
Lewis said more officers are expected to join the campaign next week and the council has several other plans it is considering to address littering.
“We are at a place where we are disgusted at what is going on and it’s not like people don’t know it’s wrong and are not aware of the law. When you ask them if they are, they say yes and they never have a proper reason why they litter,” she said.
Since the campaign started, 25 persons were caught in the act on Regent, Water, Cornhill, Robb, and Croal streets. The city, however, released 24 names: Terrence Clarke, Sherry Murray, Imran Sookram, Jennifer Persaud, David Bidder, Erina Kissoon, Joseph Hatton, Chatnarine Roopnarine, Abigail Giddings, Winston Selman, Natia Samuels, Bibi Shemeza Baksh, Seon Blair, Sookranie Ragubeer, Dia Dia Zhang, Xing De Ling, Koomattie Ganga, Deloris Taylor, Jin Chang Tan, Hu Jink Wei, Andre Charles, Sookram Gookul, Derek Klass, and E Yusuf.
The M&CC will also be placing more bins around the city. It has 30 gallon drums that can be provided to anyone for a small fee of $1,000. They will be free to all pensioners.
Later in the year, the council will organise community talks to raise awareness about littering but it hopes that the campaign brings enough attention to the issue.
“Littering has no age, culture, or gender. We want to address the issue at every face of society and we have to draw the line,” Lewis stated, while pointing out that the council has been carrying out an environmental awareness programme in primary schools.
While the persons who are caught littering will be charged and eventually fined, Lewis said she believes there needs to be a stiffer fine. “It should be more, you know. At least at a point that it would hurt people when they have to pay and that’s what we need. We need people to be second guessing on whether they should litter or not,” she said.
