Sick and ‘tyred’

Member of Parliament for St Thomas, Cynthia Forde, is sick and tired of the parish where she was born and bred being used as a dumping ground.

This afternoon, as she took Barbados TODAY on a tour in areas of the parish where dumping is a major cause for concern, Forde lamented that it was time for perpetrators to feel the full force of the law.

In fact, Forde gave the assurance that she would be going after the individual responsible for dumping almost 100 used tyres beside the road at Bucks in the same parish.

Forde said she would be handing over to authorities information she received from a concerned citizen, who witnessed the tyres being taken off a vehicle and thrown onto the side of the road, causing vehicles to have to slow down as they passed.

She suggested that any person found guilty of carrying out the unlawful act, should be made to clean up all the tyres, and also other garbage dumped in the area.

“Unless you shoot a general, nothing is going to happen. Pay a fine, clean up the gully, and make sure you follow on the straight and narrow. St Thomas is not a dumping ground,” Forde said.

“I am sick and tired of this. Can you imagine that somebody would stop and dump these tyres here, so close to the Mangrove Landfill? This is ridiculous.

“People driving alongside the road are hitting the tyres, and as we can see, this is dangerous for road users, because it can cause accidents, people to get injuries, or to lose their lives,” Forde said.

She was especially upset about the indiscriminate dumping situation since the tipping fee, which was introduced in May 2015 at a cost of BDS$25 per tonne, was abolished on December 3, 2018, by the ruling Barbados Labour Party (BLP).

The MP stressed that householders, and waste haulers, have no excuse not to take their dump to the landfill.

“When we got to Bucks on both sides of the road where the bridges are, that is another dumping section. Anybody could build two apartments and furnish them with the kind of furniture that was in there if it were not furniture that had to be disposed of. Cupboards, stoves, fridges and even trophies, some person just throw behind a bridge. The odours from dead animals, I would hope and pray that it would not be a human being or human beings in that case. But really, something is wrong with the psyche of some of my people,” she said.

Forde added that she was feeling particularly distressed because her Government has been putting measures in place to protect and preserve the environment, but people were still dumping indiscriminately.

She admitted the country was experiencing a garbage pile up due to a shortage of disposal trucks.

However, at the same time, the Member of Parliament praised the fact that two trucks arrived on the island this week, with others on the way.

“But in the meantime, why are we going to litter our streets to create problems for others, and to create illnesses. This is why I am feeling extremely distressed to see that too many of our citizens are just not conforming to the law.

“I would recommend that anybody who is caught must be punished and that when reports are sent to the law enforcement agencies, that they are followed up,” she said.

A resident from the Bucks area told Barbados TODAY that another resident witnessed the tyres being dumped in broad daylight by a man last weekend. According to the aggrieved resident who said he was tired of the dumping problem, relevant information had been passed on to the police and Ministry of Health.

“But nobody ain’t come and move the tyres yet. This is absolute foolishness. We need to make somebody an example in the courts,” the resident said.

Over past years, a number of persons have created environmental problems by illegal dumping but have not always been prosecuted. In most instances when caught they have been made to clean up their waste by health and environmental officials.

anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb