Municipal authorities must enforce toilet use at beach

Fish vendor Elaine Clarke is distraught over the unsanitary conditions at the Rocky Point Fishing Village in Clarendon and wants the authorities to address the matter.

"Sanitary inspector soon come here, because a food we a deal with and it no good for our health to have faeces in the open," declared Clarke as she pointed to some of her colleagues who she claimed were making a mess of the beach.

"It hard to see we who live in the district and no want pay the money to go in the bathrooms; we suppose to a set example for who coming in. Sometimes you will have some elderly people come on the beach and no have it to pay to use the bathroom, but you have some big man and woman who no want pay it none at all," added Clarke.

With some persons who use the beach calling on the Clarendon Municipal Corporation to ensure that the bathrooms are reopened and persons prosecuted for relieving themselves on the beach, Councillor for the Rocky Point division and Mayor of May Pen,Winston Maragh said that responsibility for the operation of the beach, including the bathroom, was turned over to the Rocky Point Citizens Association Benevolent Society.

"They were the ones who had got this lady, and they said that to maintain the place the people had to pay, and then ... nobody would pay. Them would do them thing beside the building, because them don't want to contribute to the lady. So, the association was the one who closed it," Maragh told The Gleaner.

"I will call the president of the citizens association and find out when is the next meeting and, if I can, will drop in and see what can be worked out.

"I would have to talk to the Health Department and have them join that meeting as well, but the people definitely need to stop passing waste on the beach, because then we will have to consider locking them up for their own health and safety," said Maragh.