Responsibility and a restoration of civic pride needed to clean up Honiara as fitting the national capital
Today’s Solomon Star newspaper features an article saying street cleaners contracted under the Rapid Employment Project (REP) have urged Honiara residents to avoid littering the streets with rubbish and other debris.
The article went on to say the cleaners have worked for several years to keep the city clean providing maintenance and garbage collection.
I can imagine how disappointing it must be for those street cleaners when their hard work is unrewarded by people who disregard the urban rules to keep the streets clean and dispose of their household garbage in and around the city centre.
The neglectful and uncaring disposal of rubbish gives an unfavourable picture of Honiara to the outside world and particularly so as the Solomon Islands will relatively soon host the Pacific Games.
This year the Commonwealth Heads of Government will meet in Ruanda in Africa, where Kigali City is the national capital and which has a growing urban population exceeding 1.13 million.
I mention Kigali City because it is now regarded as the cleanest city in Africa and where tough urban penalties, very much like in Singapore, are imposed on those who cause littering and dispose of their rubbish in a negligent manner.
The enforcement of the bye-laws on littering in Honiara will continue to be a problem given the scale of reported littering and rubbish disposal, but it is very much hoped the residents will take more pride in the national capital, very much as is evident to today in Kigali City and where the urban population is very much higher than in Honiara.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
