First offenders to keep Nuku'alofa waterfront clean [1]
Wednesday, February 21, 2007 - 15:16. Updated on Tuesday, May 13, 2014 - 18:39.
First offenders who have been given suspended sentences and ordered to do community work by the Nuku'alofa Supreme Court will next month serve the community by picking up rubbish from along the Nuku'alofa waterfront.
Chief Justice Anthony Ford announced the new initiative yesterday, February 20. He said that after consultation with the Assistant Director of the Ministry of Environment and the Probation Division they decided to do something different and send these offenders to do community work by keeping the Nuku'alofa waterfront clean.
In the past first offenders with suspended sentences were sent to do community work, under the supervision of either the Salvation Army or by the town officer of the village that an offender came from, but next month it had been decided to let the Ministry of Environment supervise the offenders, who will do community work.
"I think everyone will benefit from this because in essence they are going to be ordered to carry out cleaning duties and picking up all the rubbish along the full length of the beachfront from the Ministry of Fisheries in Sopu to the far end at the New Zealand High Commission.
"Offenders know that if they do not carry out the work according to the instruction from the supervisors they will be brought back to court and they will be required to go to prison for the period of their suspended sentence," said Chief Justice Anthony Ford.
Chief Justice Ford said that the court will fix the working hours, which could be a total of 120 hours of community work, but the hours will be allocated by the supervisor and it may be four or six hours a day, and it may be on a Monday or Friday whatever the supervisor allocates.
"We are going to give it a trial and I hope it will work, I am sure that the public will benefit from it and I think it is in everyone's interest if we try and clean up the rubbish along the beachfront of this city so that it will be a nice city for tourists and the public alike".
Chief Justice Ford was hopeful that by the end of March, "we will see much improvement in the state of rubbish along the road, and I think what we are doing is consistent with other steps taken in Nuku'alofa to try and solve the problem of rubbish in the city.
"We have a new judge at the moment from New Zealand and he has been staying at Captain Cook Apartments, Sopu. He said that he really enjoyed living in Nuku'alofa but straight away he was struck by the rubbish along the beachfront, so he suggested this idea that we should try and do something to solve this problem with the rubbish. So my point is, this is someone who just arrived in the country and only a few weeks and already he was struck by the problem and I just followed it up about two weeks ago."
The Chief Justice praised the foresight of the law makers who enabled the court to suspend a prison sentence and allowed the offenders to carry out community work, "which is particularly relevant for first offenders, giving them the last opportunity to keep out of prison, and it is going to be up to them if they work and keep out of trouble, then they won't have to go to prison but if they mess around they know they will go to prison.
"We will monitor this program closely to see how it goes but I would hope that it would not have to be ongoing because I hope that the citizens of Nuku'alofa will see what we are trying to get at and in a few months there might not be any rubbish around."