Fine for dropping litter up to R500 |28 July 2008

The Department of Environment says this is part of its efforts to reduce the amount of rubbish found in the country right now.

When the fixed penalty was introduced in 1994, people caught littering were fined R100; this increased five years later to R200.

The department’s technical adviser, Flavien Joubert, says they decided to increase the fine by R300 from August 1 to make offenders feel the pinch of paying up and think twice about doing it again.

“We want the law to be severe enough to force people to change the way they act, as it seems the R200 penalty in place before was not really a deterring factor,” he says.

Mr Joubert says there have been instances of people caught dumping litter in public areas, on one occasion repeating the offence the next day regardless of the fines they have to pay.

There are authorised officers – such as marine parks authority officers, police officers and port officials – with the power to impose on-the-spot fines for anyone caught dropping litter.

The department says it is working to include district administrators as well as health officials on the list of authorised officers.
 
Mr Joubert also says the department is planning on putting more bins in town soon to go with the increase in fixed-penalty fines.

Rita Gay