Municipal staff caught dumping trash into river

Courtesy of anonymous contributor

TWO Municipal Department workers were caught on camera dumping rubbish into the Brunei River recently. The government officer who captured the incriminating video has posted it on Youtube website. He first noticed this while having a conversation with a tourist by the jetty along Jalan residency.

"We were watching her (the worker) sweep when she suddenly dumped everything into the river. We were both shocked!" he said. "When the tourist asked me about it, I did not know what to say."

Since then he began observing them and once saw the particular worker sweep the litter from the jetty all the way to the Fire and Rescue station into the river. He even approached one of the cleaners about it but she shrugged it off nonchalantly.

After having witnessed the incident for the third day in a row last week, he decided to capture it on camera. . The purpose for uploading the video, he said, is to raise awareness on pollution because "it is very embarrassing. Especially when tourists come across such situation."

Pengiran Omarali Hj Mohd Yussof, the Head Section of Support Unit and Mechanical Maintenance at the Municipal Department, said: "We are taking note of this matter." He said that the two labourers in the video have been identified. "We will try to find out why they did that," he said, maintaining that actions of the two labourers do not reflect the unit's mission.

The department is now planning to beef up the surveillance to curb such occurrences. He attributed it to shortage of officers to monitor the work. The municipality expansion has increased the duties of the supervisors who now cover a wider area.

"We have proven to the people that we have taken good care of Bandar Seri Begawan. You can see the difference between areas under our responsibility and those not under us. Don't let the actions of a few people tarnish the reputation of the entire department," he added.The Brunei Times