The Ju­ly/Au­gust school va­ca­tion has be­gun and for many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans it marks that time of the year when we take our an­nu­al trip. Some per­sons may be head­ing far away from our shores, while a great many would be jour­ney­ing to the beau­ty of our sis­ter isle.

A vis­it to our sis­ter isle can help to trans­late one glar­ing dif­fer­ence be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go. Clean­li­ness. The beach­es, her­itage sites, road sides and scarce­ly pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas are most­ly clean and al­most free of the ran­dom lit­ter and dump­ing that seems to plague Trinidad. Per­haps it is a dif­fer­ence in cul­ture be­tween the is­lands or maybe To­bag­o­ni­ans ap­pre­ci­ate that clean­li­ness is more ap­peal­ing to tourists, whichev­er it is, there is a stark dif­fer­ence be­tween both is­lands.

T&T has the ben­e­fit of the Lit­ter Act. The Lit­ter Act cre­ates the po­si­tion of lit­ter pre­ven­tion war­dens who are em­pow­ered to is­sue no­tices for lit­ter re­moval and to in­sti­tute pro­ceed­ings for any of­fence com­mit­ted un­der the Act.

Aside from per­sons who are trained and cer­ti­fied as lit­ter pre­ven­tion war­dens, all po­lice of­fi­cers, mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers, pub­lic health in­spec­tors and oth­er such per­son­nel are vest­ed with the pow­ers of Lit­ter Pre­ven­tion War­dens, yet, Trinidad is still rid­dled with a lit­ter­ing prob­lem. A few short weeks ago, it was re­port­ed that an­oth­er batch of lit­ter pre­ven­tion war­dens had com­plet­ed their train­ing and were set to as­sist in in­ten­si­fy­ing the fight against lit­ter­ing.

One dri­ve through our high­ways, sec­ondary roads or vis­it to the beach­es makes it ev­i­dent that Trinidad is los­ing the fight against lit­ter­ing. Our wa­ter ways are clogged with var­i­ous forms of trash and while many per­sons suf­fer from flood­ing an­nu­al­ly, we still have yet to re­alise that some of our poor habits con­tribute to these is­sues.

De­spite sev­er­al beach clean-up cam­paigns dur­ing the course of the year, our beach­es are al­ways filled with trash left be­hind by our own peo­ple who are hap­py to vis­it our beach­es, but, are not equal­ly as anx­ious to en­sure it re­mains clean. Fast food box­es, bev­er­age bot­tles, pa­per wrap­pers and oth­er such items are ca­su­al­ly thrown out of mov­ing ve­hi­cles as if the en­tire coun­try is sim­ply one big trash bin.

Less de­vel­oped ar­eas are now used to cre­ate new dump­ing grounds for tyres, small ap­pli­ances, house­hold items and oth­er such things, be­cause clear­ly, we are un­able to make a phone call to our re­spec­tive mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions for as­sis­tance with bulk dis­pos­als.

Sad­ly, this must be com­pared to our sis­ter isle where the boat tour op­er­a­tors and oth­er lo­cals can be seen ran­dom­ly pick­ing up a stray bot­tle or piece of trash on the beach and dump­ing it in the bins which are al­ways close by.

The her­itage sites, which, are al­ways prop­er­ly man­i­cured and free of lit­ter. Even the walk to Ar­gyle Wa­ter­fall con­sists of avail­able trash cans to en­sure that per­sons are not tempt­ed to lit­ter or should have no need to leave lit­ter be­hind.

Sad­ly, we need to ramp up our ef­forts in Trinidad. Sim­ply train­ing and ap­point­ing new lit­ter pre­ven­tion war­dens are not enough. While the Lit­ter Act may grant some pow­ers to these in­di­vid­u­als, it is in­suf­fi­cient to cre­ate a mean­ing­ful im­pact. Trinida­di­ans, it seems, learns or cor­rect ac­tions on­ly af­ter hav­ing felt the brunt of pun­ish­ment. The in­tro­duc­tion of the breathal­yser and stiffer penal­ties for dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence is a clear in­di­ca­tion that we on­ly cor­rect be­hav­iour when strong­ly com­pelled to do so.

There are var­i­ous parts of Trinidad that have be­come known dump­ing grounds, no amount of sig­nage and/or threats have pre­vent­ed the pop­u­la­tion from dump­ing. Yet, I am un­aware whether the lit­ter pre­ven­tion war­dens in col­lab­o­ra­tion with ei­ther the po­lice ser­vice or the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers mon­i­tor these ar­eas and en­sure that per­sons found dump­ing are prop­er­ly charged and pros­e­cut­ed. Or, it may well be that some­thing as sim­ple as dump­ing is not im­por­tant enough to have col­lab­o­rat­ed ef­forts.

Traf­fic war­dens are usu­al­ly very vis­i­ble in cer­tain ar­eas. In fact, traf­fic war­dens are of­ten ac­cused of cre­at­ing more traf­fic con­cerns than al­le­vi­at­ing any. De­spite how they are viewed, the fact is that their pres­ence is no­tice­able. While we are all aware that lit­ter pre­ven­tion war­dens are em­ployed and sta­tioned in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties, their vis­i­bil­i­ty is ques­tion­able. In cer­tain ar­eas lit­ter war­dens have been known to fre­quent mar­ket places and the booths used by var­i­ous ven­dors and is­sue ci­ta­tions for throw­ing waste and/or re­moval no­tices for the man­ner in which they dis­card pro­duce. Agree­ably, that is im­por­tant, but, tar­get­ing these per­sons and ar­eas alone will not re­solve the ac­tu­al is­sues which plague us.

It may be time that we re­view our Lit­ter Act and re­con­sid­er the ap­proach adopt­ed with re­spect to lit­ter pre­ven­tion war­dens, the charges and fines. Ad­di­tion­al pow­ers should be con­sid­ered and adopt­ed.

Of course, it would be far eas­i­er and cheap­er to hope that as Trinida­di­ans we take pride in our coun­try and sur­round­ings and sim­ply stop dump­ing and lit­ter­ing, but I have se­ri­ous doubt about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of that hap­pen­ing with­in my life­time.

Pavi­t­ra Ramharack is head of Cham­bers at Pavi­t­ra Ramharack At­tor­neys at Law and

can be reached at ramharack_pavi­t­ra@out­look.com.