Canadian expat Andy Greenlay, 72, who with 10 others has been picking up garbage in the Soi Namjai area for 15 years, says that they are no longer making a dent in the trash problem – it’s outstripping their efforts.
Mr Greenlay first complained to The Phuket News and said the focus of the problem is a patch of private land opposite the local market. The problem does not stem from the market, Mr Greenlay explained, because garbage trucks from Rawai Municipality pick up the rubbish from the market.
But they don’t collect the garbage piling up opposite. This is private land, and the Municipality has responsibility for the collection of garbage only from public places.
“I have been living here for more than 30 years,” Mr Greenlay told The Phuket News. “I was here when there were only three Canadian on Phuket here a dozen or so foreigners in Patong. It was all rice fields then.
“Now we have more than a square kilometre is filled with plastic bags and garbage. I have no control over this and the Or Bor Tor [Municipality] doesn’t do anything about it. Their job is to keep the town clean, to look after Rawai. But they don’t seem to care. All they worry about is getting elected.”
The owner of the land, who asked not to be named, told The Phuket News that he has been trying every way to stop people dumping garbage there. He even closed off the entrance to the land with barbed wire.
“I strung barbed wire around the garbage area to let people know that no one can dump anything here. But some people – I don’t know yet who – came and removed it, so people continue to dump garbage in my place.
“I think the people [who snipped the wire] may have been vendors in the market because they need somewhere to park their cars. I really don’t know what to do now.
“People have stopped dumping garbage in daytime because I asked those who live in the area to call me if they saw the wrongdoers, so that I could call the police to arrest them.
“But now people come and dump garbage here at night time, about 7pm or later.
He doesn’t want to go and check at night time, in case he gets attacked.
It’s not just the illegal dumpers who are making money. Some brazen local entrepreneur has also jumped on the bandwagon, the landowner explained.
He asked around, and said someone who lived nearby was collecting a fee to allow people to dump trash on his land. He visited the man, but no one answered the door.
“Every time when I catch someone dumping garbage on my land I ask them whether they would like it if someone dropped trash in front of their house. They all agreed they wouldn’t like it.
“I tried setting fire the garbage but municipal officers came and said I was causing air pollution. So I don’t really don’t know now what I can do.”
Asked what action they could take over the problem, Surachet Jitmaet at the Rawai Municipality Public Health Department said that the municipality can take care only of garbage in public areas, not on private land.
“We have no [legal] right to do anything on private land. By law, the land owner has to take care of his own land. In this particular case, I’m not sure if he is allowing people to dump garbage there or not. If not, when people come and dump garbage like that, he can sue them.
“We take care of the garbage from the market because the vendors leave all the trash at the pick-up point, which is on public land, so, we can take care of it.”
“I would suggest the land owner does something serious about blocking off his land. He should make a proper fence that no one can remove. I’m sure then that the problem will stop,” he added.