Residents awaiting NCDC to pick up rubbish

 By MALUM NALU

THE beachfront community at Iduabada in Port Moresby, which has been cleaning up the litter-filled mangroves for the last week, is still waiting for all the bags of rubbish to be picked up and disposed of.

Community members, who were busy cleaning up the mangroves yesterday morning, said they were glad to help in cleaning up and the onus was now on the National Capital District Commission to pick up the rubbish.

They made it clear that they were not the ones responsible for the flotsam and jetsam as it was brought in by the tide from nearby coastal communities.

A spokesman, Patrick Paime, said a senior NCDC official saw the filthy state of the mangroves last week and asked the local community to clean it up.

“There are six groups of 10 people each involved in the clean-up exercise,” he said.

“The place is now a lot cleaner and people have been coming and sitting on the beachfront in the evenings. 

“We want to discourage people from using the beachfront as a public toilet as this should be a recreational area where people can relax and enjoy the surroundings.”

Female member, Angela Patrick, said the clean-up was part of NCDC’s Christmas Cleanathon.

“Whether this clean-up exercise will continue, we don’t know,” she said.

“We want this beachfront to be clean all the time and we are willing to do that every day if we are engaged on a fulltime basis. 

“Now that we have cleaned up the beachfront, you can see the roots of the mangroves very clearly. 

“I will ask NCDC to engage about 10 people on a fulltime basis to clean up the beachfront every day. “We are happy to be involved in the clean-up because this is where we live.”

Patrick, however, added that NCDC had not done its part by picking up the rubbish.

“We have been collecting this rubbish since Monday last week but no dump truck has come to pick it up,” she said.

“There has only been one collection and we have been expecting more. This hasn’t been done and it’s accumulating every day.” Another group member, Eric Joba, said most of the rubbish here was brought in by the tide. 

“We are not the ones who litter the place,” he said.

“The litter is brought in by the tide. 

“The nearby coastal communities are the ones responsible for this and this gives a bad name to us. 

“Many people think that we are the ones who litter this place but this is not so.”