CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

As Trinidad and To­ba­go gets in­to gear for the ul­ti­mate events of Car­ni­val 2023, Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, is urg­ing cit­i­zens to "not aban­don our un­der­stand­ing of the en­vi­ron­ment, the im­pacts of our be­hav­iours on it, and the im­por­tance of its pro­tec­tion dur­ing this time."

In a me­dia re­lease, Min­is­ter Beck­les says while there are sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of the pop­u­la­tion en­gag­ing in the sea­son’s fes­tiv­i­ties, there al­so are large num­bers of peo­ple who will be spend­ing time in na­ture, par­tic­i­pat­ing in ac­tiv­i­ties such as hik­ing, camp­ing, swim­ming, or just re­lax­ing in the na­tion’s nat­ur­al spaces.

She is en­cour­ag­ing every­one to ex­er­cise en­vi­ron­men­tal aware­ness in their var­i­ous spheres of en­joy­ment.

"The rev­ellers who will be tak­ing to the streets are re­mind­ed that there are iCare bins for re­cy­clable ma­te­ri­als such as glass, plas­tic, drink car­tons and so on through­out the main cities. Bands can al­so col­lect re­cy­clable ma­te­ri­als," she said.

In ad­di­tion, the Min­is­ter is ask­ing the seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion try­ing to get away from the car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties via na­ture, to leave noth­ing but foot­prints, "and take away on­ly mem­o­ries from the na­tion's green spaces."