Tendai Franklyn-Brown, Staff Reporter

Laura Campbell (centre) is one of several women whose job is to scale and gut fish at the Old Harbour Bay fishing village in St Catherine. Campbell disclosed that efforts to clean the beach are often temporary as there were not enough resources to maintain the cleaning operations. - photos by Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer

Former chairman of the St Catherine Parish Council's public health committee, Dr Raymoth Notice, is supporting calls to close the Old Harbour Bay fishing complex to all, should the insanitary conditions persist.

Notice is adamant that more needs to be done to protect the public's health.

Poor sanitation at the beach has been a recurrent worry for local authorities, residents and vendors. The parish council is currently investigating the conditions at the beach with a view to take urgent curative action.

"I am supportive of a public health inspector's recommendations to close the beach until the parish council, environmentalists and the fishing community at large, adopt a public health policy to prevent putting people's lives at risk."

Simple policy

On a recent visit to the facility, The Gleaner news team found informal settlements, huge piles of garbage and blatant abuse of the environment. Food, flies, garbage and other refuse competed with the fisherfolk for space.

"Over the years people have built houses, without proper sanitary convenience. The people who work on the beach actually make 'families' on the beach and waste matter enters the public area," Dr Notice said.

Notice staunchly opposes those who suggest the beach's closure will affect the businesses in the area.

"We can't afford to play with health and we have allowed it for a long time; it really is a simple policy of cleanliness is next to godliness."

He continued, "Yes, people's livelihood will be affected, but which comes first, is it the livelihood or the threat of infectious diseases becoming a danger to the entire Jamaica?"

A fisherman who wished to remain anonymous insisted the closure of the complex would not go down well.

"They can't close the beach, fishermen have no choice, this is people's breadbasket. The beach needs to be cleaned, but we need a truck to be sent down every evening to take away the waste because the two skips can't hold it".

Affecting business

Another fisherman said, "The beach is not clean so it is affecting business, there are no toilets on the beach and the waste just runs over. Every year it's the same thing, the Government needs to do more".

"Sometimes we burn the garbage, sometimes we put them into a bag and carry them to the sea and dump them. But we don't have no big truck to come and pick up the rubbish. This is an everyday thing", he said.

Big fishing village

Laura Campbell, a fish 'scaler', revealed that efforts to clean the beach are few and far between. "Sometimes helpers would come and clean it but it's a long time since they've come and as you clean it's dirty again. Many people come here because it is a big fishing village, but if you go over by the market house you can see the rubbish and the people when they come down here they complain about it."

Two skips donated by the fisheries division of the Ministry of Agriculture remain filled with garbage, at the Old Harbour Bay fishing village in St Catherine. The beach has been ordered closed should the insanitary conditions go unaddressed.