Dear Editor,
The norm these days is for citizens to indiscriminately dump refuse anywhere and everywhere, and this practice has become so prevalent that the values once attached to cleanliness (Cleanliness is next to godliness‘) are now lost to most. The picture as it relates to household and business garbage disposal is very bleak.
For example, citizens dispose of garbage in front of other people’s property, and if a property is unoccupied they take upon themselves to make it a permanent disposal site. One citizen had to clean up the drain and parapet of a property, and the things found in the gutter were phenomenal, but of course there was some neglect on the part of the property owner which allowed for this build-up. This was accepted by the property owner who fortunately had good neighbors who coaxed and cajoled to get the clean-up done.
But why was this build-up so horrid? Did people just throw stuff as they went by? Or was it done by the same uncaring people who lack a notion of cleanliness? I don’t know, but, as I drive my car on the streets of our country, I observe our people and the way they do their disposal of rubbish. These are some of the habits: hiring a ‘junkie‘ to take garbage from one’s residence to anywhere; travellers/ commuters throwing food boxes, plastic receptacles, bottles, etc, out of a vehicle’s windows; dumping anything in our canals, waterways, drains etc. I have seen old fridges, dead animals, wooden planks, cloth, plastic bottles and styrofoam boxes thrown in trenches blocking the free flow of water; no wonder we have flooding as soon as the rain drizzles.
I did some clean-up as a community contribution just last week. For months canter trucks would pull up on the Eccles Flour Mill access road, and dump everything they do not have any use for; on the southern side of the road could be found old gas stoves, discarded fridges, wood, rejects no longer useful to contractors, tree branches, tyres, car parts and a host of other things too numerous to mention. Myself and two boys that I recruited with the consent of their parents (David and Jared) heaped up and burnt all that could be burnt, but what do you know, the dumping was renewed the next day.
How can citizens be so callous and uncaring; do we not value our health and that of our children?
Let us stop this disposal madness, and find appropriate ways and means to dispose of our garbage and not to dump anywhere and everywhere.
Could the NDC of Eccles/Ramsburg look into the Flour Mill road dumping problem?
Yours faithfully,
Ivan John
