?As a res­i­dent of Mar­aval, I tra­verse the Sad­dle Road through San­ta Cruz and the Morne Co­co quite fre­quent­ly. Both of which are beau­ti­ful wind­ing moun­tain roads through scenic Trinidad and To­ba­go. While dri­ving along these won­der­ful moun­tain roads the stretch­es of beau­ty are punc­tu­at­ed by scat­ter­ings, heaps, piles, mounds and in some places moun­tains of garbage and de­bris dumped by less than civ­il mem­bers of our crum­bling civil­i­sa­tion.

From fridges and stoves to tires and toi­lets. On the crest of the Morne Co­co there are two dump­sters, pre­sum­ably for pub­lic use. There is so much garbage in and around the bins, it has be­gun a jour­ney on­to the road par­tial­ly block­ing the west­bound lane. This seems to be a com­mon sto­ry that takes place all over our beau­ti­ful Twin Is­land Re­pub­lic.

I felt a par­tic­u­lar­ly sting­ing pain in my soul this past Sat­ur­day. While dri­ving to Mara­cas for a swim and a shark and bake, I saw a truck pulled way over to the side of the grass up against the tree line and in­stant­ly I knew what was hap­pen­ing. I pulled over on­to the side of the road just up the hill from these three gen­tle­men and watched what has be­come a stan­dard prac­tice un­fold be­fore my very eyes. Tar­pau­lin off and shov­el in hand the dump­ing com­menced. Grant­ed these men were of­fload­ing what ap­peared to be bro­ken bricks and oth­er as­sort­ed con­struc­tion de­bris they were still il­le­gal­ly dump­ing refuse in­to our for­est. It raised in my mind a ques­tion. Where else do in­di­vid­u­als with dis­pos­al needs have to go to get these needs met?

I once found my­self in the San Fer­nan­do area with a van tray full of rub­ble and de­bris. I head­ed up the high­way to the Clax­ton Bay fly­over and pro­ceed­ed to the For­rest Park dump. On ar­rival at the top of the fly­over I was greet­ed by a group of men who climbed on­to the back of my van and off we went to the dump. Af­ter of­fload­ing the con­tents of my tray a de­mand was made for mon­ey. Stand­ing in a sea of garbage fac­ing a group of men, one with a cut­lass, I thought it best to pay the re­quest­ed sum and un­der no cir­cum­stances would I ever re­turn.

What would it take for the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to set up a fa­cil­i­ty or fa­cil­i­ties where cit­i­zens can go and legal­ly dump their garbage free of charge? The Sealots fa­cil­i­ty op­po­site the Port Of Spain Mar­ket where the garbage trucks go to of­fload their loads with a dri­ve in, of­fload, dri­ve out sys­tem for cit­i­zens seems not on­ly sen­si­ble but achiev­able too. It seems to me that if peo­ple have nowhere to go they will in­evitably turn to il­le­gal dump­ing.

In­stead of just threat­en­ing pun­ish­ment why not of­fer an al­ter­na­tive? In the event that the dump­ing con­tin­ues then im­ple­ment jail sen­tences for il­le­gal dump­ing. There must be a vi­able al­ter­na­tive for peo­ple to dump their waste. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we can­not count on our broth­ers and sis­ters to do the right thing any­more, es­pe­cial­ly if it is too dif­fi­cult or if it costs too much.

Con­cerned Cit­i­zen

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