Acting Portmore Mayor to Look at Regular Cleaning of Beaches

Acting Mayor of Portmore, Councillor Leon Thomas, has welcomed a suggestion from Member of Parliament for South St. Catherine, Fitz Jackson, for more regular cleaning of beaches in the municipality.

He said he will be holding discussions at the council level towards the possibility of implementing quarterly clean-up exercises.

“It’s a possibility [that] on a quarterly basis we could look at that type of operation with our schools, our citizens associations and service groups across Portmore.  It’s definitely something that we at the Portmore municipality will have to sit down and talk about and with over 60-odd citizens’ associations, I’ll be putting that to them to see how best we can do it,” he said.

Councillor Thomas was speaking to JIS News following a successful International Beach Clean-up on Saturday (September 19) at the Hellshire Bay Beach, where piles of garbage and other debris were removed.

The activity was hosted by the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) and the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) and involved participation from hundreds of volunteers.

Mr. Jackson, who participated in the exercise, suggested a more frequent clean-up programme by the participating groups using an adopt-a-beach strategy.

Councillor Thomas, noted that cleaning the stretch of coastline from Port Henderson to Hellshire would require quite a bit of people involvement and resources.

He said he will have to “seek audience with the Minister with responsibility of the Environment (Hon. Bobby Pickersgill) and the Minister of Tourism (Hon. Dr. Wykeham McNeill), to get their support to carry out that exercise on a quarterly basis. It’s really a good suggestion and we at the council are going to have a long look and discussion to see about getting it done.”