Maputo beaches on tight zero tolerance litter regime

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Maputo beaches on tight zero tolerance litter regime

3:10 CAT | 19 Feb 2016

Notícias / ‘No Trash on our Beaches!’, read the signs from the Ministry of Land, Environment and Rural Development (MITADER)

Environmental and municipal authorities are getting tough with individuals who litter on Maputo’s Miramar and Costa do Sol beaches.

The first Ministry of Land, Environment and Rural Development (MITADER) “No Trash on our Beaches!” signs went up a few days ago, signalling a total ban of leaving garbage anywhere but in the rubbish bins provided.

The operation, a collaboration between the city of Maputo municipal police, the National Marine Institute and the maritime police, was launched in October and is backed in law by the Prevention of Pollution and Protection of the Marine and Coastal Environment regulations approved by the Cabinet in 2006.

Offenders will be liable to a two thousand meticais fine, which can be converted to beach clean-up work if the offender is unable to pay the fine, environmental inspector Albertina Banze explains.

So far, Banze says, inspectors have been choosing to apply the beach cleaning sanction to offenders, rather than the fine. “The signs are just one of the ‘No Trash on our Beaches!’ measures,” he said. “Monitoring started last year, in places where the public could use bins provided by the municipal authorities.”

Asked if he had seen any progress since the beginning of the campaign, Banze said that making offenders clean up the beach as punishment had reduced the amount of waste outside the bins significantly.

“We have had a positive response from the public. Whenever bathers see someone cleaning the beach they tell us to keep up the good work so that we have an increasingly clean and desirable environment,” Banze said, adding that “the intention is to give people a shock”.

It is expected that by next summer warning signs will appear on all the country’s beaches.

Source: Notícias