I think people just realize, when the Duke's visited to our country, that Honiara is not really clean as compared to other capital cities in the region, resulting in the working together for cleaning up Honiara City.
My question is why don't the authorities concerned practice this before to keep our city clean, making it a better place to live. As I Quote from the article "Honiara City Filth a Concern" stated by one of the citizen "The authorities cannot do it themselves, rather they need the co-operation from the public". Exactly! Citizens can only work if the authority concern put more effort and re-enforcing laws.
As I know there are Acts of parliament and regulations that the authority, specifically the Environment department and the Honiara city Council with the Town and Country Planning Board, are those that should enforce the law.
For instance by looking at the Environment Act 1998 section 6 which focus on the function of the Division states in subsection 1:(i ) conduct public education and awareness programmes about the environment; and (k) promote the study of the environment through research, surveys, listing and classification. By looking at this, I think that the concern Environment or Health department already done this, but only if the citizen know the likely effects of unclean environment towards the health, economic, cultural, and the physical appearance of the city, and the effective officer there then we will achieve it. In Honiara itself there are some heavy pollution that are not really fits for such pollution to be in the center of our city. For instance in the Mataniko river and other so-called dumping site in the city.
The Local Planning Scheme under the Town and Country Planning Act (Cap.154) needs to be reviewed. I know that the authority concern drafting an interim one but it needs to be gazette to replace the old one way back in the colonial era 1977. In section 6 subsection (1)the purposes of a Local Planning Scheme shall be - (a) to assist in securing orderly development in the interests of the health, amenity, convenience and general welfare of the community; This subsection is the one of the most that needs to be considered by trying to review the Planning scheme as soon as possible. Because only if the orderly development in the interest of health everything I think will be ok. Better and healthy environment indicates better planning which lead to less pollution; likewise it will also help the city council office in the urban planning works. Thus, within the city and the working together of the community (citizens) the authority.
Cleaning the Filth in our City
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