Easter — the flying of kites, the beach feting and party time islandwide — was a sort of rehearsal for Labour Day next week, which sometimes itself seems like a rehearsal for Carnival. The roads will be filled with all and sundry heading for the nearest bacchanal — the nearest beach, the nearest of the dwindling number of places where you can fly a kite without it becoming entangled in electricity lines.
We at G3 enjoy the party atmosphere as much as anyone. Go ahead and have a good time: though give a thought, as at Christmas, to the ‘reason for the season.’ Celebrate friendships, celebrate closeness and enjoy a day off work and with the family. Enjoy.
But please do not spoil it for anyone else. What is so difficult about leaving a beach as you would wish to find it? The fact that there is one toilet at Bathway, and that nobody seems willing to add portable toilets need not give those who defecate and urinate on a public beach in a residential area give offenders a clean conscience. It should make them demand proper facilities.
Why are the roadside ditches, so carefully trimmed and groomed by the recent islandwide de-bushing, regarded as extensions of Perseverance? This is the season that tour guides dread, as tourists, expecting ‘Pure Grenada’ to be a clean island, pitch their cups and plates and forks and drinks cartons out of cars, in the utterly wrong belief that “someone will be paid to pick it up.”
At this time of year, there will be no growth of plants to hide our shame. It may be picked up eventually, but meanwhile, people have to live by the roads and beaches with the remains of your chicken and the rats they attract; with the styrofoam cartons and the mosquitoes that they eventually breed. Happy Labour Day to all, but do not spoil it for anybody else. Why trash your backyard?
Source: G3, Grenada Green Group
Until such time that littering is a fineable offence, it will continue unabated.