The government must be applauded for the success of the Christmas cleanup that cost us nearly $450,000. A staggering 752 persons, who were unemployed at the time, took part and were the recipients of this money.

I must not forget that the UDP Government under McKeeva Bush’s captaincy introduced the idea and I was saddened when at first the PPM’s premier, Alden McLaughlin, announced his government would not be continuing it.

Thankfully wise heads changed his position.

Now the government have announced the cleanup will be held TWICE a year. The large number of persons who turned up to apply for the clean up work before Christmas was a real wake up call.

To read the government release you will find it in today’s iNews under Editor’s Choice “Cayman Islands government completes successful Christmas clean up”.

Cleaning up our land in the past has been done freely by volunteers and I hope the initiative to pay persons to do this twice a year will not deter the willingness of persons still to come forward and do this arduous job.

Of course, none of this would be necessary if persons would stop littering up our beautiful country and it is not only the land they throw their garbage on. The ocean is also a target for many of them.

Do we have enforcement officers employed to see our country is kept clean? No we don’t. Now that too might be money well spent and keep a few more of the unemployed in jobs. In some city councils in the UK they do have such persons and there are hefty fines dished out to the polluters.

The other way to stop pollution is to educate the people. When was the last time you saw a government advert?

When I look around I am ashamed to say I see garbage everywhere.

I don’t know why people can’t throw their rubbish away properly. They are lazy and have no respect for others. They don’t seem to care about the environment either.
This makes a beautiful place look ugly. And when you walk anywhere near the North Sound it is full of rubbish because they think people won’t see them do it.

So policing and education should help and hopefully employment will have risen and we don’t have to pay our unemployed to come out in such numbers to help clean up what should not have been necessary in the first place.