DOE Donates Equipment For Anti-littering Campaign

If you’ve noticed an increase in new waste containers and no dumping signs recently, it may have been part of the Department of Environment’s “Have Civic Pride Anti-Littering Campaign”. Today, the campaign was strengthened after the department and the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing collaborated to address the issue of garbage and pollution along our roadways with the donation of new cleanup equipment.

Britney Gordon, Reporting

The “Have Civic Pride Anti-Littering Campaign” has been an ongoing initiative led by the Department of Environment for the past few weeks. Several endeavors, such as the implementation of new waste bins dispersed throughout Orange Walk and Corozal towns, the erection of multiple ‘no dumping’ signs, as well as the training of traffic wardens from the different town councils to issue littering tickets have been executed as a part of this campaign. Today, the newest endeavor was launched when the DOE donated fifteen new weed-whackers to the Ministry of Infrastructure Development & Housing’s Road Maintenance Unit.

Orlando Habet

Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development

“With these fifteen weed cutters at a value of close to 18, 000. Really the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing has a very good program in cleaning up the highways. And we want to show our appreciation and collaboration with that project. And also to strengthen the project and program that we have with the Department of Environment to do these clean up campaigns, but also to we have a have civic pride campaign initiative, which we want to spread throughout the rest of the country. In recent months, you will see some expenditure on advertisements on placards and billboards and reaching out to the schools throughout education programs.”

Minister Habet also explained that, in an effort to deter people from littering, stiffer penalties will be implemented for those caught doing so.

Orlando Habet

“One of the things that we want to do is not only to have those, that information and education campaign, but also to have the compliment of doing the monitoring through the end, through an enforcement unit, because if you don’t have the enforcement to go along with it, then it will not be successful. So we are partnering with the traffic department with the municipalities for training and also to empower them to be able to issue tickets for fines and was speaking to the chief environmental officer that we can also have some conversation with the magistracy so that when somebody is caught littering, instead of just giving a fine, possibly to ask them to have a community service program where they will be, instead of a fine, they will have to do community service.”

Evondale Moody, Chief Engineer at the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing, expressed the ministry’s appreciation for the donation, as well as its hope for the campaign moving forward.

Evondale Moody

Evondale Moody, Chief Engineer, MIDH

“Today we’re very pleased to be receiving these bush cutters from the Department of Environment. It will surely go a long way in assisting us in our road maintenance unit that we have implementing in the future routine and periodic maintenance across the entire country. We have been doing an intense amount of work on all our main highways and we’ve also been assisting in areas where you have the hot spots that the Minister has alluded to in cleaning up those areas as well. What we’ve found out is that, over the years, in doing the road maintenance, that as soon as we start picking up the garbage, there continuously has been people distributing garbage again, throwing them through the vehicles and when we pick up a hundred bags in a day, the following two weeks we have another one hundred fifty bags to pick up. And with the assistance of DOE, we were able to get some garbage bags and safety vests as well last year, which we’re very appreciative of. But this continuously becomes a problem for us in the road maintenance, which we have to execute on a regular basis. And so we would just like to appeal to the public to have some civic pride in keeping your garbage in your trucks or keeping your garbage in your cars and disposing of them when you reach home. Because yes, we’re there to maintain the highway, but we cannot continuously be picking up garbage all over the main highways that we have.”

Britney Gordon for News Five.