When will we stop ‘Dutty up Jamaica’?
The ‘Nuh dutty up Jamaica’ campaign was launched in February, 2015 with the aim of keeping the island clean and protecting our coastline.
The beauty of our beloved Jamaica has been marred by its residents’ nastiness and the Government’s inability to keep it clean despite various campaigns.
It is said that ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’, and it is amazing that in a country reputed to have the most churches per square mile it is so unkempt.
We would be appalled by the response from church cleaners as to the cleanliness of its members.
The distasteful behaviour of littering stems from pedestrians throwing garbage on our roads, to factories dumping effluent in the sea. Pedestrians tend to be oblivious to the result of their actions when they eat and throw plastic bags, bottles or banana peels on the roadway or sidewalks.
This shows blatant disregard for fellow citizens, especially the disabled among us. Our nastiness also contributes to outbreaks of deadly infectious diseases such as dengue, CHIKV, and leptospirosis.
Is there a law against littering, and, if so, whose responsibility is it to carry out the enforcement? One may see it as just one piece of paper or one bottle, but when it rains all the ones come together to cause millions of dollars in damages.
Walking around St William Grant Park in the capital city is like touring a urinal in a time of drought. At the intersection of West Queen’s Street and West Parade, there is a returning pool of ‘sewage water’ on the pedestrian crossing for several weeks now, with no one attending to it. The famous ‘Gully’ in Cassava Piece, St Andrew, can be easily mistaken for Riverton dump as the residents use it to dispose of their garbage.
Kingston is not to be outdone, as the other parishes can also identify with unsanitary behaviour perpetuated by its residents, business owners and factory operators. The sad reality is that the children are following the bad habit of the adults.
We can make the ‘nuh dutty up Jamaica’ campaign a success by disposing of our garbage in the right places; let’s join hands and hearts and vow to play our part in cleaning up Jamaica.
There is an epidemic of littering among Jamaicans which I find appalling and incomprehensible. Many of the verges along our road-ways – commercial and residential – our city,town, village centres and gullies have become literal dumping grounds for all sorts of garbage. This has had and will continue to have implications not only for general aesthetics of the country but even more importantly for its health in respect of the spread of infectious and other diseases.This propensity for littering by some Jamaicans has been observed and commented on not only by our civic-minded and health and environmentally-concerned fellow citizens but… Read more »
No dam civic pride!!!
they need to get serious and start charge$5000 when get caught ,then they will stop.