No more talk

Publication: Sunday Sun
Paper Section And Page: 1A
Paper Date: Sun, Jan 23, 2000
Byline: by Terry Ally


FOUR people are facing prosecution for illegal dumping and the breeding of mosquitoes on their premises.

Principal Environmental Health Officer of the Maurice Byer Polyclinic, Ashley Greenidge, said the Director of Public Prosecutions Office would be helping with the procedure “for laying charges against individuals in the north of the island”.

Greenidge told the SUNDAY SUN: “We have people who were warned; and the days for prosecution are very,  very nigh – I can tell you that. We cannot wait any longer.”

He did not say how many people would be prosecuted or from which parishes, but a high-level source in the Ministry of Health stated there were four householders who would be charged.

Greenidge was speaking after a tour last week of problem gullies in St. Joseph which must be cleaned urgently. Three were heavily polluted by garbage and drainage in the other blocked.

Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of the Environment, Senator Tyrone Barker, also toured the area with the chairman of the Gully Group, Ricardo Ward, last week.

Barker appealed to the civic-mindedness of  Barbadians to stop the “rampant illegal dumping”. Deeming the tour an eye-opener, he added: “I would like to think the people of Barbados are educated enough to see the error of their ways, because the garbage was not put here by monkeys or by cows.”

Over the past five years, 16 Barbadians have died from dengue fever, but that was with the exception of 1996 when there was a massive islandwide clean-up.

Environmental Health Officer Maurice Gaskin, at a discussion of a new environmental awareness initiative by business houses, said last week: “In 1995, we had three deaths from dengue and in 1996, we approached the private sector: all the people who had trucks. We removed 1 860 truckloads of bulk waste from around the country and that year we recorded zero deaths from dengue.

“The mosquitoes in 1996 had no place to breed.”  Last week, waste – from household bags of garbage to appliances and furniture – were found in the gullies. At Russia Gully, health officials found a heap disposed of after a spring clean; in it was an item traced to a resident of Marchfield, St. Philip.