Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein is call­ing on cit­i­zens to record, take pic­tures and re­port any in­stances of il­le­gal dump­ing that they en­counter.

Speak­ing dur­ing the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion’s (PTRC) month­ly statu­to­ry meet­ing yes­ter­day, Ho­sein com­mend­ed lo­cal chut­ney artiste Ner­mal “Mas­sive” Go­sine for re­port­ing an in­ci­dent sev­er­al weeks ago.

That re­port even­tu­al­ly led to the per­pe­tra­tor be­ing ar­rest­ed, charged and fined $1,000 for dump­ing co­conut shells from his ve­hi­cle in Palmyra.

Ho­sein said while he un­der­stood that Mag­is­trate In­dar Ja­groo in the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates Court was le­nient in sen­tenc­ing, he was fed up of of cit­i­zens break­ing the law.

“I’m go­ing to press that once you are caught il­le­gal­ly dump­ing you should pay the full $4,000 fine, that’s a de­ter­rent not to dump in the fu­ture,” Ho­sein said.

“In to­day’s so­ci­ety we hard­ly get peo­ple com­ing for­ward to as­sist the po­lice in car­ry­ing out their du­ties. I would like to com­mend Mr Go­sine for not on­ly con­fronting the is­sue but go­ing above and be­yond to help the pros­e­cu­tion as a wit­ness. This is an in­spi­ra­tion to cit­i­zens to do the same. If you see things like that, record, take pic­tures and bring it to the po­lice.”

The cur­rent fines are $4,000 for or­di­nary cit­i­zens and up to $8,000 for cor­po­rate bod­ies found il­le­gal­ly dump­ing.

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice, Bri­an Headley, echoed the min­is­ter’s state­ment, say­ing it is on­ly when po­lice and the cit­i­zen­ry work to­geth­er that crime can be curbed.

Headley said be­cause Go­sine re­port­ed the act, the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice were able to do their jobs.

“It just goes to show what our Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has been say­ing; we need to work hand-in-hand with the pub­lic and the pub­lic work hand-in-hand with the po­lice. And in this case. Mr Go­sine saw some­thing and it’s on­ly be­cause he said some­thing that we have a con­vic­tion. This is the sup­port that we need from the pub­lic.”