KINGSTON, Jamaica — The Government team that visited the Pedro Cays today returned encouraged that residents are on board to help solve problems plaguing the three tiny islands located off Jamaica’s south coast.

Pedro Cays recently got media prominence stemming from a pile-up of garbage and lack of proper sanitary facilities on the islands, known for fishing.

“When we reached there today, the place was as clean as a whistle. What they did is they burnt what they could burn and they made their own landfill [that was] covered properly... And then they made a pit as a receptacle for whatever [other] garbage. They also separated the garbage and so on,” Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Roger Clarke told the Jamaica Observer following his visit to the Cays earlier today.

Clarke said he was buoyed by the residents’ efforts, but that much more would have to be done. 

To that end, Clarke said he and the other team members — including Minister of Health Fenton Ferguson and Minister of Local Government and Community Development Noel Arscott — also met about 100 residents on Middle Cay.

“I think it was a good meeting. They expressed their views and I told them exactly what we were about. We told them that we had to regularise the system... that the illegal people over there are not to be there,” he said.

— Petre Williams-Raynor

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