RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA
rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

In­lets along the south­ern Coasts of Trinidad are in­un­dat­ed with lit­ter and coun­cil­lor for Pa­lo Seco, Dana O-Neil Ger­vais, has start­ed do­ing some­thing about it.

Last Sat­ur­day (Feb­ru­ary 13th), O-Neil Ger­vais and a team of 20 vol­un­teers be­gan clean­ing up the Los Iros Beach and Sobo Beach in Pa­lo Seco. Both ar­eas are prime hotspots where Venezue­lan mi­grants en­ter il­le­gal­ly.

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian Me­dia, O-Neil Ger­vais said she was con­cerned by the pol­lu­tion around the coasts which is af­fect­ing ma­rine life.

"I have a nine-year-old son who has done projects on pol­lu­tion and every time we go to the beach, he wants to take a bag and pick up all the lit­ter that we see," O-Neil Ger­vais said.

She ex­pressed shock at the type of garbage they found.

"We picked up bro­ken chairs, lots of bot­tles, sty­ro­foam, un­der-gar­ments, and even an old suit­case.  In all we picked up 23 jum­bo bags of garbage, filled to­tal­ly and we did that in two hours," O-Neil Ger­vais said.

She ex­plained that there was still a lot to be done so she planned to con­tin­ue the beach clean-up on Feb­ru­ary 27.

O-Neil Ger­vais called on more cit­i­zens to sup­port the dri­ve.

"We must work to­geth­er to clean up our beau­ti­ful beach­es and pro­tect our nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment. We want peo­ple to main­tain the clean­li­ness and seren­i­ty of the beach­es. When you lit­ter you hurt the en­vi­ron­ment," she said.

The coun­cil­lor al­so called on the au­thor­i­ties to hire lit­ter war­dens to pa­trol the na­tion's beach­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly on days when the beach­es are heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed.

Af­ter the clean-up, the garbage was sep­a­rat­ed for re­cy­cling.  

Among those par­tic­i­pat­ing in the ex­er­cise were the coun­cil­lor's ex­ec­u­tive as­sis­tant De­wana Vin­cent, MP for La Brea Stephen Mc Clashie, and for­mer coun­cil­lor Roopc­hand Bal­li­ram.

Any­one want­i­ng to as­sist in the beach clean-up at Los Iros on Feb­ru­ary 27 can con­tact Vin­cent at 484-8742.