Litterbugs Ja's worst pests

THE EDITOR, Sir:

Recently, someone wrote in The Gleaner about roaches, flies and mosquitoes in a Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) bus. These pests are there because people eat on the bus and leave food scraps, fruit peel and other garbage behind - in spite of the no-eating, no-drinking and no-vending signs.

As I do not care to drive, I take the Express from to Spanish Town from Papine when I have to go there. One day at the depot in Spanish Town, I was the fourth person to board, and the other three were all eating, two seated right behind the driver. I thought I had seen it all when, a few days later, the driver of bus licensed number PE2219 sat at his seat eating a meal. Then he exited the bus and threw the Styrofoam container on the ground.

But this is par for the course in Spanish Town. The areas I know are Ffrench Street, Oxford Street, Burke Road, Wellington Street and Young Street. Anything the pedestrians eat while walking - watermelon, mango, guinep, whatever - they just drop the peel. The vendors discard spoiled produce in the drains and sidewalks. The fish vendors scale and gut fish and leave everything there.

In a drain across the street from Victoria Mutual, there has been part of an electric fan and part of a stove blocking the drain for about six months. There is a lady who comes on the bus selling food, and everybody buys, except me.

Not even in Haiti or Senegal, two of the poorest countries in the world, is there so much garbage on the streets. I do not know what it will take, for even if there is some attempt to clean up the place, by the next few days it will look the same way.

COMMUTER

Kingston 6