Scavengers urged to be COVID-19 cautious

WESTERN BUREAU:

Audley Gordon, executive director of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), is warning scavengers who sort and collect things for personal use or resale from the landfill at Retirement, in St. James, to stay away from the area or use appropriate tools to search to protect themselves from the COVID -19.

“I am speaking to you here in Retirement, but I am equally speaking to the entire Jamaica, in terms of our landfills, because we have people that attend all of our landfills and do the same thing that you do and we want them to know that we are carrying things into the landfill that could infect them at this time and we don’t want them to get infected,” said Gordon, during his visit to the area on Wednesday.

The meeting came in the wake of reports that the COVID- 19, which has so far caused the death of one person in Jamaica, was detected in St James.

“You are in a very delicate position, in that you will, from time to time, search what comes on the [garbage] trucks and you do that without even having proper gear, so you expose your entire self to the danger,” said Gordon. He further cautioned that given the rapid spread of the virus globally, every effort should be made to limit the scope for the spread of the virus.

“You have to wash your hands regularly with soap. I know that you are not that poor, you can buy little bleach, little alcohol, little sanitiser; buy it and use it regularly and get some gloves and don’t go and dip up in the garbage because you don’t know when a piece of tissue, or one of the dust mask or a napkin or a wipe with the virus will come into contact with your hand when you are searching,” continued Gordon.

“That virus can live for hours so when it arrives at the landfill, there is a good chance that it arrives here alive and well, and can cause people to become infected,” he added.