Garbage piles up in Manchester
Published:Wednesday | June 15, 2016 | 12:00 AM
MANDEVILLE, Manchester:
The issue of poor garbage collection in the parish continues to be a bother to residents, even amid a possible outbreak of the Zika virus.
Southern Parks and Markets (SPM), an arm of the National Solid Waste Management, has revealed that a reduction in the number of working trucks on their fleet has caused the backlog, but the mayor of the parish, Brenda Ramsay, is not impressed with the organisation's efforts to find a solution to this ongoing problem.
"What needs to happen at solid waste is better management of what they have. It needs capital injection to buy new trucks ... Putting a Band-Aid over this will not work," said Ramsay.
She further admitted that some persons have resorted to burning their garbage, dumping them in gullies, while others store their garbage for weeks, which oftentimes becomes a challenge.
She told Rural Xpress that there has since been a request to provide assistance to the entity, but perpetuating one problem to solve another is not the wisest decision.
OTHER PROBLEMS
"We have been asked to say that we are putting some of the money we are getting from street lights towards solid waste, but while I understand the urgency to have the place cleaned up we have to also understand that crime in Manchester is increasing," said Ramsay.
With contractual arrangements made with SPM and commercial entities on the frequency with which garbage should be collected, residential areas ought to be visited once per week, however, this is not always the case as some residents have to wait up three weeks to have their garbage collected.
Manager at SPM Richard Sadhi explained that persons have made false reports of four-week garbage piles.
He expressed that once the organisation has a fleet of 14 working trucks, collection will happen as it ought to.
"Once a unit is down, it causes problem for that schedule. We need 14 trucks to adequately collect all areas on an average a day. We are averaging 10 working trucks currently for the region," said Sadhi.