Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

A Ch­agua­nas man caught lit­ter­ing has apol­o­gised to fel­low burgess­es and the peo­ple of T&T, vow­ing nev­er again to dump rub­bish il­le­gal­ly along the road­side.

The 26-year-old from En­deav­our, who asked not to have his name pub­lished, spent most of a re­cent Sun­day morn­ing clean­ing up an il­le­gal dump­site af­ter be­ing ap­pre­hend­ed by the Ch­agua­nas Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

ASP Liza Phillips told Guardian Me­dia that mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty had record­ed the man dump­ing bags of rub­bish on No­vem­ber 9 and lat­er post­ed the footage on so­cial me­dia. She said her team con­tact­ed him and, in­stead of is­su­ing a fine, reached an agree­ment re­quir­ing him to clean up the pile of refuse lo­cat­ed on the south­ern end of the round­about link­ing Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road and the con­nec­tor road be­tween Ch­agua­nas Main Road and Pierre Road. The road­way is sit­u­at­ed in an aban­doned hous­ing es­tate pre­vi­ous­ly owned by Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed and now vest­ed in State Lands.

“We are not a so­ci­ety that be­lieves jail is suit­ed for all of­fences; we are a restora­tive so­ci­ety,” ASP Phillips said. “We de­cid­ed to bro­ker an agree­ment where he would re­turn and clean up the place.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that the man may not have been re­spon­si­ble for all the rub­bish, Phillips said it was a case of “Pe­ter pay­ing for Paul”. She not­ed that pa­trols would be in­creased and warned that in­di­vid­u­als caught lit­ter­ing could face fines of up to $3,000. The mu­nic­i­pal po­lice, she added, are al­so ex­plor­ing ad­di­tion­al ways for lit­ter­bugs to make amends. Po­lice have fur­ther vowed to crack down on own­ers of ship­ping con­tain­ers il­le­gal­ly parked on the east­ern end of the road­way, cre­at­ing a haz­ard.

Coun­cil­lor Sun­dar Jookoo (Fe­lic­i­ty/En­deav­our) of the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion said res­i­dents can use the Clax­ton Bay and Port-of-Spain land­fills free of charge. He added that the bor­ough al­so of­fers a dump­ing ser­vice for $350, which in­cludes a back­hoe and dump truck for burgess­es.

Jookoo said il­le­gal dump­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tributes to flood­ing, and he hopes the hous­ing lots in the aban­doned es­tate will soon be dis­trib­uted to ben­e­fi­cia­ries. “By il­le­gal­ly dump­ing, they find it’s cheap­er,” he said, not­ing that stiffer penal­ties are need­ed to de­ter of­fend­ers. “We are go­ing to make those per­pe­tra­tors very pop­u­lar on so­cial me­dia.”

The man said he was un­aware of the $350 dump­ing ser­vice of­fered by the CBC and ad­vised oth­ers to use it.

“I was do­ing some work at home. I know it was a bad choice to con­tribute to il­le­gal dump­ing, but I am here, to­day, hope­ful­ly to re­deem my­self. Mis­takes have been made, and this is not a mis­take that will be made again,” he said.