McKenzie warns J’cans not to let their COVID guard down

Minister of Local Government and Rural Development Desmond McKenzie is warning Jamaicans that amid the removal of all the measures under the Disaster Risk Management Act (DRMA), they are still responsible for preventing the spread of COVID-19.

“Those restrictions, while they have been lifted, are not an indication that COVID is gone. It is still here. What the Government has done is to say to the Jamaican people, for the last two years you have been faithful. You have worked hard. You have maintained the protocol. The time came and we had to take the decision to remove those restrictions,” McKenzie said.

He was speaking at the Embassy of Japan and the National Solid Waste Management Authority’s (NSWMA) grant contract-signing ceremony at the offices of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development in St Andrew on Tuesday for the purchase of two new garbage compactors at the cost of $31.5 million.

Since March 18, when it became effective for the orders under the DRMA to be withdrawn, numerous parties have been held, where hundreds of Jamaicans have been partying and socialising without masks and social distancing, which they are being warned about as the nation continues to recover.

McKenzie also mentioned the major contribution that the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development made to the nation’s COVID-19 recovery process, which includes funds which should have bought garbage trucks that were promised before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“COVID came and we had to take some decisions, because we’ve never experienced COVID before. None of us in our lifetime would have experienced what a pandemic was like … and so the funding to purchase these 100 trucks were diverted and we have seen the benefits of it, because Jamaica has done exceptionally well in our fight against COVID-19,” McKenzie said.

The grant contract was signed by McKenzie and Masaya Fujiwara, the ambassador of Japan to Jamaica.

These two garbage trucks will be procured from a Japanese automaker under the embassy’s Grant Assistance for Grass-Roots Human Security Projects Programme (GGP).

For his part, Fujiwara said, “Through this project, the NSWMA aims at improving its operation of the current garbage collection services in eight communities: Allman Town, Barbican, Fletcher’s Land, Payne Land, Kintyre, Standpipe, Goldsmith Villa and Grants Pen in the parishes of Kingston and St Andrew.”

He added: “Those eight communities were targeted because the MPM Waste Management Limited (operated under NSWMA) overseeing the communities currently does not own any small garbage compactor trucks available which can drive through the communities.”

Under the GGP, approximately $1.4 billion has been spent on 121 projects across Jamaica funded by Japan between 1995 and March 2022.