Ostend (The Brussels Morning newspaper): Community guards in purple uniforms help enforce rules and reduce littering while assessors blend in to catch offenders. Ostend plans to limit beach access to manage overcrowding effectively.
Community guards wearing purple uniforms help keep public order and prevent littering. Their presence in public areas encourages people to follow the rules and avoid things like littering or misbehavior. The bright uniforms make it clear that they are watching which helps reduce rule-breaking. On the other hand assessors wear regular clothes and work quietly to watch for people who litter or do other illegal things. By not standing out they can catch offenders in the act because people are less likely to litter if they think someone is watching. By blending in with the crowd assessors can effectively take note of and deal with rule-breaking, which helps enforce laws against littering and other offenses.
How will new GAS fines and beach limits affect Ostend?
A change in the rules regarding GAS (Municipal Administrative Sanctions) fines. GAS fines are penalties given by local governments in Belgium for minor offense, like littering or breaking local rules. In the case they mentioned the fines for a first offense have gone up from 63 euros to 150 euros. If someone breaks the rules again the fine can go up to 350 euros for each violation. This increase is meant to make sure rules are followed and to discourage people from breaking them again by making the fines higher. The amount of the fines can change based on what the violation is and how often it happens.
Ostend is planning to limit the number of people allowed on the beaches next year because the beach nearest to the train station can only hold 500 people but on busy days there can be as many as 3,000. They want to direct visitors to other beaches to spread out the crowd since they have 6 kilometers of beach available. Alderman Dock believes that the local police should get extra support from federal police or officers from other areas during busy times just like they do for major football matches especially when the population on the coast increases significantly in the summer.
