A Ch­agua­nas man caught dump­ing rub­bish on the road­side has apol­o­gised to res­i­dents and pledged nev­er to re­peat the of­fence.

The 26-year-old from En­deav­our, who asked not to be named, spent Sun­day morn­ing clean­ing an il­le­gal dump­site af­ter be­ing ap­pre­hend­ed by the Ch­agua­nas Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice.

ASP Liza Phillips told Guardian Me­dia mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty filmed him dump­ing bags of rub­bish on 9 No­vem­ber and post­ed the footage on­line. Her team con­tact­ed him and, in­stead of is­su­ing a fine, agreed he would clean the pile of refuse near the south­ern end of the round­about on a con­nec­tor road be­tween Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road and the link be­tween Ch­agua­nas Main Road and Pierre Road. The road sits in an aban­doned hous­ing es­tate for­mer­ly owned by Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed and now held by State Lands.

“We are not a so­ci­ety where we be­lieve jail is suit­ed for all of­fences, we are a restora­tive so­ci­ety,” ASP Phillips said. “We de­cid­ed to bro­ker an agree­ment where he de­cid­ed to come and clean up the place.”

She said while the man may not have dumped all the refuse, it was a case of “Pe­ter pay­ing for Paul.” She added pa­trols will in­crease and warned in­di­vid­u­als could face fines of up to $3,000. Mu­nic­i­pal po­lice are al­so look­ing at ways for lit­ter­bugs to make amends. They will ad­di­tion­al­ly tar­get own­ers of ship­ping con­tain­ers parked il­le­gal­ly on the road­way’s east­ern end.

Coun­cil­lor Sun­dar Jookoo (Fe­lic­i­ty/En­deav­our) said res­i­dents can use the Clax­ton Bay and Port of Spain land­fills free of charge. He added the bor­ough of­fers a $350 dump­ing ser­vice us­ing a back­hoe and dump truck. Jookoo said il­le­gal dump­ing wors­ens flood­ing and hopes out­stand­ing hous­ing lots will be al­lo­cat­ed soon. “By il­le­gal­ly dump­ing they find it’s cheap­er,” he said, adding stronger penal­ties are need­ed. “We are go­ing to make those per­pe­tra­tors very pop­u­lar on so­cial me­dia.”

The man said he was un­aware of the $350 ser­vice and urged oth­ers to use it. “I was do­ing some work home, I know it was a bad choice to con­tribute to il­le­gal dump­ing, but I am here to­day hope­ful­ly to re­deem my­self, mis­takes have been made and this not a mis­take that would be made again.”