Councillor suggests blocking roads with garbage to highlight crisis
Published:Friday | June 10, 2022 | 12:13 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Councillors at the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation (WMC) are lamenting the continued garbage-collection issues affecting the parish despite being able to haul in nearly a third of the $526-million property tax target for the 2022-2023 financial year in just the first two months.
In April and May, the WMC was able to collect approximately $195 million in property taxes as it seeks to meet the target set by The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development.
Devon Thomas, councillor for Northern Savanna-la-Mar, lamented that while property owners are abiding by their obligations to pay taxes, they are being choked with uncollected garbage.
“We have a serious garbage problem, so as a council, I think we just need to come together and take the garbage and block the road to get action,” Thomas told fellow councillors at yesterday’s WMC general monthly meeting. “When the citizens of this parish hear how much money we collect from them and their garage not being taken up, how do they feel about that?”
Cebert McFarlane, councillor for the Leamington Division, noted that while the municipal corporation is an oversight body for garbage collection, the only thing it can do is take reports and make noise, a situation he said that the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) understands and manipulates.
“The municipal corporations must have control over payment to the National Solid Waste Management Authority for the collection of garbage. As it is now, whether they collect garbage or not, they are still paid, and the municipal corporations cannot say, ‘There is no collection and we are not going to pay’,” McFarlane argued.
He appealed to all councillors to join the campaign to press the Government to pass legislation granting municipalities the power to only pay the NSWMA for work done.
“I would like to assure the residents of Westmoreland that it is not the Western Parks and Market or the National Solid Waste Management Authority’s wish to have garbage that is not removed. It is due to the downtime of both companies and supplementary units,” Leona Bennett, NSWMA’s senior public cleansing inspector for Westmoreland and Hanover, told the meeting.
A report tabled showed that last month, residents in 159 districts across all three constituencies in the parish were experiencing major delays in garbage collection, which Bennett said was a result of mechanical challenges with the three government-owned garbage trucks and another three from private contractors used to provide collection services.