Participants of Ocean Day and Environment Day activities rewarded |01 July 2020

Representative of Dave Essack (Ocean Day video winner)

World Environment Day and World Ocean Day were celebrated on June 5 & 8 respectively and due to the COVID-19 pandemic, activities for these two international days were not done on the magnitude of previous years. Nevertheless the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change in collaboration with the department of the Blue Economy organised a series of activities such as video competition, radio quiz and knock-out.

The winners of these competitions were rewarded on Friday in a small ceremony held at the Botanical Gardens in the presence of the Minister for Environment, Energy and Climate Change, Wallace Cosgrow; the principal secretary for Energy and Climate Change, Wills Agricole; Jeanette Larue, director general Public Education and Community Outreach Division; the winners and other guests.

“Usually we do conduct activities on the field but due to the coronavirus we launched a competition on social media for Environment Day to show the effects of coronavirus on bio-diversity and for Ocean Day we launched a family video competition to show ways in which they can help protect the ocean,” said Ms Larue.

She noted that some videos even reached over five thousand likes.

For the Ocean Day competition the prizes included cash ranging from R500 to R1500, cameras and tokens and for Environment Day the prizes were a coco-de-mer and cameras.

The prizes were sponsored by the department of environment and the Environmental Trust Fund.

“For the public we organised a set of questions where they could call in and try their luck,” Ms Larue added. The winners included Amada Jean, Vanessa Camille and Fernand Morel.

Dave Essack was placed first for his Ocean Day video where he showcased his family cleaning up the beach and marsh and also recycling some of the garbage they had picked up.

They also talk about the importance of the North East Point marsh and why we should keep it clean.

The other winners for the Ocean Day video completion are Shantilal Dhanjee, who came in third and Jan Michalski who came in second.

As for the environment video competition Kerthi Vasan Naiken came in first, followed in second and third place by Shakthi Alexander and Zane Dugasse respectively.

A knock-out competition was also organised to mark Ocean Day. The first prize winner was secretariat and education division, followed by LWMA in second place and third place went to Botanical Garden.

The photos taken by our photographer Thomas Meriton show the top two winners in the different categories collecting their prizes.

Christophe Zialor