ONE Opposition Member Parliament is adamant that the pride and industry that once flowed in the veins of Barbadians is missing.
In fact, MP Cynthia Forde insists that “something is wrong with the psyche of our people and unless we start to educate and re-educate them, they will have no interest in anybody but themselves”.
Making her presentation in the Lower House yesterday as the debate on the Barbados Green Economy Scoping Study resumed, she expressed extreme disappointment with the decisions by some locals to engage in the practice of illegal dumping, noting that villages in rural Barbados were now bearing the brunt of this practice because of their remoteness.
The St. Thomas representative also claimed that the controversial tipping fee was leaving her constituency a “dumping ground”.
“Every quarter acre of St. Thomas has illegal dumping going on… People are so criminal minded with the dumping because it is not in their backyard that they are putting it even on the Mangrove Road nearest to the dump and you know what is responsible for that Mr. Speaker? The tipping fee… It is causing a lot of the illegal dumping. So people leave wherever they go to make St. Thomas the dumping ground and it bothers me whenever I see the dead animals, when I see the large amount of commercial refuse around the place, in somebody’s property, on a plantation that appears to be abandoned, alongside the road and I have got photographs of business houses, barrels with the names of institutions that are high-leading institutions in this country. The persons who may have been hired to dispose of it, may have received the tipping fees, but may have dropped it somewhere else along the way,” she stressed.
Forde reminded persons that in the past, districts on the island were well-kept with everyone ensuring that around their homes and lots were clean.
Noting that there were many lots now overgrown with bush because cuts in the public sector had significantly reduced manpower, she insisted that many community persons were willing to get engaged in cleaning up these areas, but lacked the resources to do so.
She therefore called for synergies between the public and private sectors and these groups to get Barbados back to being a clean nation. (JMB)
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