PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT

Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i

By Bonifacio Basilius

SAIPAN, CNMI (Marianas Variety, Aug. 7) - Early this week I talked with some young men who have been providing cleaning services on roads located in areas outside Koror’s main hamlets and thoroughfares. What they told me was a "shocker!" These fellows come from one of the hamlets located in the center of Koror State whose very active and civic-minded councilman had recruited and organized them to provide cleaning services on the roads in their area. Not wishing to offend or embarrass anyone, they asked that the name of the village they recently cleaned and their own identities be kept anonymous in this report.

"All last week we worked on the ditches in the "X" settlement, and I tell you, it was the most difficult and nauseating assignment we’ve ever had. All the ditches in that area were filled with all kinds of household rubbish, including raw garbage, which were simply dumped there as if the ditches were the officially designated garbage disposal areas.

We had to remove rotting foods, decomposing fish bones and entrails, chicken parts, and soiled baby bumpers among many others. The smell emanating from these junks while we were shoveling them into wheelbarrows to carry them away was terrible. We could barely stand it, but we persisted and we did finish the job," the road cleaners told me.

One fellow who had read in the newspapers about the outbreak of Dengue fever and the many cases of Gastroenteritis illness in Palau said the Ministry of Health need not go far to look for the causes of these health problems.

"All they have to do is to take a walk through the outlying villages and settlements, particularly the ones located near the mangrove areas, and they will see for themselves the sources of the diseases that they have been combating in the hospital. They will see stagnant pools of water that could be the breeding grounds for mosquitoes that might be spreading the dengue fever. They will also notice the overflowing ditches and smell the foul odor emanating from them. These could be the sources of the gastroenteritis illnesses in Palau", the fellow said.

The inspectors at the Sanitation Division of the Ministry of Health and the road cleaning crews of both the National and State governments should take this advice and check the ditches of the village roads in their areas to make sure that they are functioning correctly.

Public Parks and garbage disposal sites should be maintained and not allowed to become health hazards to the community.

While we are still on the subject of community cleanliness, we would like to point out that many sections of the wall made of tin-roofings on the road to M-Dock, which separate the public garbage disposal site from the public road, has sustained extensive damages and must be repaired as soon as possible. If those damages are not repaired soon, we run the risk of having careless people throwing their trashes from their vehicles supposedly to the disposal ground. Of course, the majority of that trash would simply fall on the side of the road and, before long; we would have mounds of garbage blocking the road to M-Dock.

Finally, garbage deposited in trash cans located in public parks and dock areas should be collected regularly. Otherwise those trash cans would be overturned by hungry animals and their contents spilled all over the place, becoming sources of health hazards to the public.

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