Chairman of the Bartica Regatta Committee, Holbert Knights, believes that the headline of an article in this paper’s March 15 edition reflects badly on the community as it prepares to host the Easter Regatta celebrations.

The headline of the story in last Monday’s paper read: ‘Bartica golden beach becoming garbage’ and it highlighted the state of the beach after Sunday limes and who was responsible for the cleaning of the beach.

Speaking to Stabroek News on Thursday at the official launch of the Regatta weekend, Knights who is also the Regional Chairman of the Region Seven community said that the beach is cleaned regularly and cleaning is done on a voluntary basis. He went on to state that “it’s not a case where when you look around bottles and garbage all over. The situation was heavily exaggerated”.

Knights then expressed his concern over the timing of the article since Regatta activities have already commenced. He stated that the article presented the picture that the beach, the  site where the racing will be held, is not cleaned. He stressed that it did not look good for the Regatta.

 Regatta activities began yesterday and the climax of events will be on April 3-5.