The Anti-littering Act of 2007 was enacted to combat indiscriminate waste disposal, but not much enforcement has been made due to lack of enough provision to prosecute offenders, rendering the law almost ineffective forcing the Barrow government to reintroduce monthly cleansing exercise dubbed ‘Set-setal’.
Last year, the minister for Environment, Climate Change and Natural Resources, Rohey John Manjang, told the National Assembly that the enforcement of Anti-littering law was still a challenge in the country due to lack of comprehensive waste collection and management strategy.
The new regulation is expected to address challenges of recent and has the broader mandate to deal with all kinds of anti-littering offences.
Declaring the workshop open, Lamin Samateh, on behalf of the executive director of NEA, said environmental issues are always challenging, adding that these challenges have been ongoing for so long, while citing climate change among others as global phenomena.
He talked about the impact of chemicals on both human health and environment, saying it’s high time that a more up-to-date regulation is put in place. “For us to prosecute people for anti-littering, we would need an updated regulation.”
Samateh finally thanked the consultant and partners of the project for the job well done.
The representative from West Africa Coastal Areas Management Programme, Muhammed Leroy A. Gomez, acknowledged that there's a lot of work to be done to curb anti-littering in the country.
“We are here to reiterate our support to the NEA and all the partners,” he assured, while outlining the different components of the WACA project in The Gambia.
