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Monday, July 14, 2025

Who cares about Maracas?

by

Helen Drayton
2481 days ago
20180930

He­len Dray­ton

The Ad­ver­tise­ment Reg­u­la­tions Act, Chap­ter 35:53 should be help­ful to Nes­tle and oth­er com­pa­nies who are spon­sor­ing bench­es with ad­ver­tis­ing on the Mara­cas Beach. These in­sen­si­tive com­pa­nies are not alone in con­tribut­ing to the clut­ter and ru­ina­tion of the scenic beach en­vi­ron­ment. More cul­pa­ble are the au­thor­i­ties who are re­spon­si­ble for its preser­va­tion and are al­low­ing that to hap­pen. Who are they? Is it the Min­istry of Tourism, the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, the Coun­ty Coun­cil or all of them? And what about the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive?

Per­haps Nes­tle should have read the Ad­ver­tise­ment Act be­fore re­spond­ing to cit­i­zens who lament­ed the bla­tan­cy of the com­pa­ny’s bench ad­ver­tise­ments and the shame­ful "ting" it de­scribed as a "wa­ter fea­ture".

Nes­tle re­spond­ed as fol­lows: "At Nestlé, con­tribut­ing to health­i­er and hap­pi­er in­di­vid­u­als stands at the fore. We be­lieve in the up­keep and preser­va­tion of our nat­ur­al land­marks and have used the bench­es as a form of com­fort for vis­i­tors. Oth­er than the close prox­im­i­ty of the wa­ter fea­ture our brand holds no as­so­ci­a­tion. Fur­ther to our in­ves­ti­ga­tion, we have been in­formed that the said wa­ter fea­ture had been re­moved. We thank you for voic­ing your con­cerns and are hap­py and will­ing to dis­cuss our com­mit­ments to the en­vi­ron­ment and how we each can play our part…" Eh!

Nes­tle re­al­ly wants us to be­lieve that it is "con­tribut­ing to our health and hap­pi­ness", by spon­sor­ing bench­es with their ad­ver­tise­ments on the beach? With re­mark­able clum­si­ness, it tried to dis­as­so­ci­ate it­self from the hideous wa­ter-thing quite obliv­i­ous of its cor­po­rate lit­ter. Who­ev­er thought that ad­ver­tis­ing on Mara­cas Beach or any beach is a good idea needs to re­flect on the ex­am­ple they are set­ting. Ob­serve what has hap­pened along our high­ways, the La­dy Young Road and every pub­lic place. Ob­serve what has hap­pened since the first set of beach lounge chairs ap­peared on the seashore about a cou­ple of years ago. There are no con­trols so more op­er­a­tors are hus­tling in re­sult­ing in many chairs sprawled across the beach dur­ing peak pe­ri­ods and in prime spots. Who is mon­i­tor­ing to en­sure that beach­go­ers who can’t af­ford to rent the chairs or those who want to re­lax on the sand get beach space?

Get­ting back to Nes­tle and its com­mu­ni­ca­tion that seemed cal­cu­lat­ed to ad­vance its in­ter­ests re­gard­less of con­se­quences to the en­vi­ron­ment, it should con­sid­er that cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty first re­quires ad­her­ence to the in­tent and spir­it of the law. It is not sim­ply dis­cre­tionary phil­an­thropic deeds like spon­sor­ing pub­lic bench­es, os­ten­si­bly, for the pub­lic's con­ve­nience. There is noth­ing wrong with a pol­i­cy of en­light­ened self-in­ter­est, but why not con­tribute to pre­serv­ing our land­marks rather than help­ing to di­min­ish the nat­ur­al beau­ty of these places. How about a cam­paign to keep the beach clean of lit­ter in­clud­ing ad­ver­tis­ing lit­ter or bet­ter still make ba­bies hap­py by pro­mot­ing breast­feed­ing. If such so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble deeds would con­flict with its brand, then in the least, don't do any­thing it wouldn't be per­mit­ted to do to Switzer­land's en­vi­ron­ment. It is not the on­ly com­pa­ny mess­ing up the beach with ad­ver­tis­ing lit­ter. The num­bers are in­creas­ing.

The Ad­ver­tise­ment Act de­fines "hoard­ing" as any struc­ture used as an ad­ver­tise­ment or used for ex­hibit­ing any ad­ver­tise­ment. Clause 3: "No hoard­ing shall be erect­ed and no ad­ver­tise­ment shall be ex­hib­it­ed up­on any hoard­ing or on any wall, tree, pole, fence, gate or oth­er place in Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­cept in ac­cor­dance" with the act. Clause 4: "In a City or Bor­ough, the City or Bor­ough Coun­cil and else­where the Coun­ty Coun­cil may erect hoard­ings or au­tho­rise the erec­tion..." Sched­ule 11 of the act iden­ti­fies spe­cif­ic ar­eas where ad­ver­tise­ments are pro­hib­it­ed, and that sched­ule in­cludes the Mara­cas Road and Mara­cas Bay. Who au­tho­rised the ad­ver­tise­ments?

In her re­sponse to Nes­tle, the words of Kathryn Stollmey­er Wight are worth re­peat­ing. "Thank you, Nes­tle, for your rather in­sult­ing re­sponse…so fed up of the ug­li­ness!"

Isn’t it time the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties take ac­tion against the abuse of Mara­cas Beach and not be com­plic­it in the ug­li­ness and break­ing the law?


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