About 50 volunteers from various groups of the SVG Red Cross Society alongside the St. Vincent Grammar School Environmental Club removed almost two skips of garbage from the beach at Lowmans Bay on Saturday.
Chairman of the Fern Side Adult Red Cross group, Jonathan Pitt said the beach clean-up was in keeping with the seven fundamental principles of the Red Cross and was vital for strengthening community cohesion and protecting marine ecosystems.
Arianna Nanton, a volunteer with the Bethel High School Red Cross group, said seeing the condition of the beach, especially after Hurricane Beryl, was “so upsetting”
“I am here today because I just wanted to see the beach clean.”
Glendon Douglas, a fisherman plying his trade at Lowmans Bay, expressed appreciation to the Red Cross for cleaning the Beach, remarking, “It looks very decent.”
The beach clean-up came on the heels of an Enhanced Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment conducted by the SVGRC in conjunction with NEMO and USAID.
The assessment found that the top three vulnerabilities in the community were mosquitos exacerbated by pollution, infestation from slugs and snails and flooding, also made worse by pollution.
This was a fantastic, well establish accomplishment. I wonder if these volunteers will visit other locations and encourage the folks living there to do the same thing for their communities. They can work with a town or village clerks to set-up the support needed to get things done.
I met some friends at the Layou – Jackson Bay beach which was once the most lovely and cleanest beaches in SVG and found them wearing water shoes to avoid stepping on the mess in the water.
Then I spoke to a friend back in Canada whose relatives were visiting and had to travel to Bequia to get a lovely sea bath.
The garbage deposited in the sea will definitely get into the food-chain and guess what: It will turn into our bodies and cause lots of damages.
This idea is fantastic and will benefit the volunteers, groups and other entities that join.
No area should wait on the government to do anything because it is the government that is causing all those garbage to suffocate the island. How can they be bragging about tourism when the beaches are dirty and there are to toilet facilities for those tourists to use?