The CEPEP Com­pa­ny Ltd, an agency of the Min­istry of Hous­ing, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs, has launched its coastal im­prove­ment and clean-up ini­tia­tive as part of an en­vi­ron­men­tal en­hance­ment pro­gramme. The launch took place at the Mi­tan Riv­er mouth in Ma­yaro last Sat­ur­day, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing. The launch was done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty groups.

The launch re­ceived the sup­port of Min­is­ter of Hous­ing, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, MP for Ma­yaro and Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Win­ston Pe­ters, the Ma­yaro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and coun­cil­lors and the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty.

Back­hoes, trucks, vol­un­teers and work­ers came out in their num­bers to clean and beau­ti­fy the beach area from as ear­ly as 6 am. To con­tribute to this en­joy­able event, par­tic­i­pants cooked on the beach and those who did not, walked with their food and snacks.

The coastal im­prove­ment and clean-up ex­er­cise is a con­tin­u­ous project and is in­tend­ed to cre­ate aware­ness among cit­i­zens about the dam­age caused to the en­vi­ron­ment by lit­ter­ing and the need to take care of the en­vi­ron­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly tourist des­ti­na­tions, and to en­cour­age peo­ple to be en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly-con­scious dur­ing leisure ac­tiv­i­ties.

Chair­man of the board of di­rec­tors of the CEPEP Co Ltd, Adesh De­onar­ine said: "We plan to take this ini­tia­tive to oth­er coastal lo­ca­tions and part­ner with the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions to car­ry out our man­date of clean­ing, beau­ti­fy­ing and im­prov­ing our coun­try. "It is not about wast­ing time and tax­pay­ers' mon­ey, but about pro­tect­ing what is ours. We sub­scribe to the quote: 'If it is to be, it is up to me,' as the key in­spi­ra­tion in en­sur­ing a health­i­er en­vi­ron­ment."