City for more powers

THE Lautoka City Council is calling for more powers to be given to council workers to impose stronger fines on individuals and companies that breach the Litter Act.

Council manager health services Rouhit Singh says a memorandum of understanding was needed between the Environment

Department and municipal councils to strengthen the work of health inspectors monitoring pollution related offences within their boundaries.

“Why can’t we draft a memorandum of understanding where we could be given delegated powers just like under the Land Transport Act that there are some delegated powers given to municipal council workers to give on-the-spot fines for certain offences?” Mr Singh asked.

“Similarly, we could have certain delegated powers under the Environment Management Act, local authorities such as municipal councils can be allowed to exercise their authority on issues that are affecting municipal councils such as open fire burning.

“We are giving notices under open fire laws through the municipal council,” he said, “but the fine is very minimal.

“We are encountering this problem on a daily basis,” Mr Singh said.

“If we could have an MOU on some of the provisions of the penalties, we could have the authority to issue these stronger fines,” he explained.

Mr Singh said municipal council bylaws on littering also needed to be reviewed.

“We have to improve the bylaws where they should be consistent.

“For instance, when the Environment Management Act came in, it should have been seen that there is another set of laws within the municipalities such as fines for open fire burning and that these fines should be aligned and not be different.

“We should have one Act such as the Environment Management Act which has more authority and is more powerful.”