The Taipei City Government’s Department of Environmental Protection yesterday said it has installed 24 surveillance cameras around the city since September to strengthen its ability to clamp down on illegal garbage dumping and catch more offenders. The department urged residents to cooperate in keeping Taipei clean.
The city government has been working on measures to prevent illegal dumping since the implementation of the “keep trash off the ground” policy in 1995 and the “fee per garbage bag” policy in 2000. A total of 480 tickets were issued to violators last year, the department said.
Department commissioner Wu Sheng-chung (吳聖忠) said the cameras had helped establish the identities of violators, and that inspectors had processed 513 violations since September and issued 253 fines.
According to Yu Fu-hui (于富惠), the director of the city’s cleaning team in Nankang District (南港), the surveillance footage helped the inspectors figure out where and when violators were dumping the garbage, which was mostly around public trash cans or near garbage collection sites.
“We don’t necessarily need to issue tickets to violators. It is also important to give warnings to violators and let them know that inspectors are doing their jobs, so that people would stop dumping trash,” she said.
Yu said she once jumped on a bus to warn a female resident after seeing her dump a bag of trash beside a public garbage can before taking the bus.
People who are found dumping trash on the street can face fines of up to NT$2,400, the department said.
Those who fail to use designated bags or are found dumping garbage outside specified garbage collection points could face fines of between NT$1,200 and NT$6,000.
Wu said the surveillance cameras have been installed at popular dumping sites around the city and that they would be moved to other locations depending on where illegally dumped thrash is being found.
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