Dr. Theresa Rodriguez-Moodie
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Dr. Theresa Rodriguez-Moodie, Chief Executive Officer of JET
By Racquel Porter
Chief Executive Officer of Jamaica Environment Trust, Dr. Theresa Rodriguez-Moodie, has welcomed the government's intention to increase fines for breaches of the Natural Resources Conservation Authority Act and the Wild Life Protection Act to $5 million, but she has raised concerns regarding enforcement.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness says the government will be tabling for debate, amendments to raise the fines in both pieces of legislation from a $50,000 ceiling under the NRCA Act and a $1.5 million ceiling under the Wild Life Protection Act to a $5 million ceiling for both Acts.
But he says a $10 million fine is being proposed for bodies corporate.
He says the current fines under both Acts do not function as sufficient deterrent to polluters, and in some cases rogue developers.
But speaking on Radio Jamaica's Beyond the Headlines on Thursday, Dr. Rodriguez-Moodie said greater monitoring is needed.
"The fines that we've been calling for have been increased significantly. And that's important, but I also want to see how we're going to improve the enforcement. So it's one thing to have the higher fines, but we also need to be working towards improving the monitoring programmes and so forth," she suggested.
In the meantime, Dr. Rodriguez-Moodie said the development of a policy to ban the discharge of waste should be expanded beyond the Rio Cobre.
"He mentioned Rio Cobre and banning of waste entering into the Rio Cobre. That one kinda struck me, you know, because I would like to know how that is going to work because we already have such a hard time managing the river, but the big picture is not just Rio Cobre. The big picture is our rivers that are being impacted," she said.
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