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PHILIPSBURG--“The government has been confronted with many commercial entities making use of government placed bins in particular areas to discharge their garbage,” Ministry of Public Housing, Spatial Planning, Environment and Infrastructure VROMI Department Head Claudius Buncamper told The Daily Herald on Monday, adding that VROMI is now trying to curb the practice.

Buncamper issued a warning on the subject in Monday’s government information page. “This naturally leads to serious capacity shortage for residential garbage and thus more chance of stray garbage all over the roads and alongside the roads,” he said in a further comment to this newspaper.

He explained that in order to “curb the abuse,” VROMI “requested various businesses in some 30 different hotpots around the island to show us the contract they have with a garbage hauler and/or their own truck number that goes to the landfill.”

VROMI received many responses in return, he said, and a way forward was indicated to businesses that could not show evidence of their own waste removal. Some other “businesses simply didn’t answer and have received a second letter. If no response is received, businesses will receive a fine.”

The government information page notice cited that “with increasing frequency, a lot of (small) businesses are disposing their commercial waste in an illegal manner, causing nuisance for... living environment and wellbeing.”

They were reminded that it is “prohibited to place commercial waste for collection by the garbage collection service (Article 19 of the Waste Ordinance, AB 2013, GT no. 135). The person producing commercial waste is obliged to remove this waste at its own expense on a regular basis, to a dumping ground designated by government...”

Infringements can result in detention of maximum two months, or a fine of maximum NAf. 1,000 under Article 38 of the Waste Ordinance.