Bourda Market gets major cleanup

Georgetown’s bustling Bourda Market was the focus of a major cleanup campaign yesterday, as the Solid Waste Department intensified efforts to tackle littering and illegal dumping across the city.
Director of Solid Waste, Walter Narine, highlighted that the work forms part of a broader push to improve sanitation and change long-standing habits.
“The challenges are enormous, but we have started, and this is not an exercise that has started now. We have had, many years ago, efforts to curb this behaviour. So, the exercise we are trying to do is to clean up all the illegal dumpsites, clean up all the municipal markets, and then have strict enforcement of the by-laws, and we’ll start prosecuting people. Because we cannot continue this cycle of encouraging people to litter,” he said.
Supporting these cleanup efforts are new trucks provided by the Ministry of Local Government, which Narine noted are already being used to handle bulky waste.

“Those trucks are already in use. We are very, very thankful to the Government of Guyana and the Ministry of Local Government for providing the resources for us. It’s much needed because the waste that you have generated here, as you can see, is not only household garbage; it’s bulky waste, and those kinds of waste do not go in the normal garbage trucks. So, these trucks are perfect — they are more suitable for this kind of exercise. And it’s not only these two trucks; the Ministry of Local Government, over the years, has contributed to the municipality by issuing garbage trucks, and now we have these dump trucks,” he stated.
He also emphasised that citizen participation is essential for lasting change.
“Citizens basically have to stop littering — that is the most important thing. Stop littering; take your garbage if you do not see a receptacle — take it home. You just can’t desecrate the environment like this. We are going towards a tourism economy, and we have to ensure we have pride in our country,” he highlighted.
While Narine and his team led the cleanup exercise at Bourda Market, Mayor Alfred Mentore spoke with Ignite News separately about the broader vision for keeping Georgetown clean in the long-term.
“From our budget that we have, we’re hoping the Central Government can subsidise a number of issues. Let us have the kind of collaborative initiative that even the new Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, Ms. Manickchand, is speaking about, so that at the end of the day we create that kind of workable solutions to the benefit of all the citizens of Georgetown,” he said.

The cleanup at Bourda Market was part of a wider campaign to reduce illegal dumping and foster civic pride.