MANCHESTER, Jamaica — People in this south-central parish are being urged to maintain cleanliness in an effort to restore civic pride, with Mayor of Mandeville Donovan Mitchell urging the public to do better in disposing garbage.

He is encouraging people to capture litterbugs in the act of dumping garbage and share photos with the authorities.

“Poor people don’t put a cat in a bag and carry it go throw into a garbage bin, because poor people live where they can bury a cat. Poor people don’t drive a SUV go throw dem garbage inna garbage bin on the roadside,” he said while addressing Thursday’s sitting of the Manchester Municipal Corporation.

“Everybody has cellphones and we use them for the wrong purposes. Take pictures of people throwing out garbage [from] their cars. Get the pictures of persons dumping garbage on the roadside and send it to us. We will make examples of some of these persons,” he added.

Mandeville once had the reputation of being the cleanest town in Jamaica.

Mitchell reiterated the effects of solid waste pollution on the environment when it rains.

“We are a nasty set of people and when the rain falls and the drains are blocked, we are the same set of people quarrelling. We have to do better,” he said.

“We are serving notice to everybody because on Emancipation Day, we are going to be emancipating ourselves from nastiness. We are going to be our brother’s keeper. We are going back to civic pride,” he added.

Kasey Williams