NSWMA concerned about rise in mini dump sites in St Catherine

The National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) has expressed concern about the rise of mini-dump sites in St Catherine.

With the approaching holiday season that traditionally generates additional household and commercial waste, the concerns about the further proliferation of these mini-dump sites were expressed by customer relations officer at the NSWMA, Rochelle Reid.

Speaking at Thursday’s general meeting of the St Catherine Municipal Corporation, Reid sought the assistance of the municipal corporation with the enforcement of NSWMA act, and councillors to carry out deep cleaning during the holidays and beyond.

“People continue to dispose of their garbage improperly and this has resulted in a number of dump sites that have been posing serious challenges for the regions of the NSWMA,” Reid said.

She added that a lot of time is spent clearing these dump sites and thus minimising the time for collection of household garbage in the communities.

Reid attributed the rise in some of the dump sites to business operators in the parish who are improperly disposing of their commercial garbage.

“Some of the challenges we are faced with is the issue of business operators giving hand cart pushers and persons of unsound mind garbage to dispose of.”

Reid said it is not for a lack of knowledge, because the business operators know that they should hire registered entities to remove the waste generated by their businesses.

According to her, the backlog of garbage that was being experienced in the parish due to resource constrains have now been reduced to 5.5 loads down from 23 in November.

“Now that the resource constrains have been addressed with the addition of the new trucks, there will be a reduction in dump sites accross the parish,” she assured, noting that upcoming plans is to totally clean all bins on the main road in Spanish Town and by extention the rest of the parish.

With this emphasis, Reid disclosed that plans are afoot by the MPM region to increase public education in St Catherine because of the growing number of dump sites all over the parish.

The issue of improper disposing of medical waste was cited by Waterford councillor Fenley Douglas as a worrying trend.

He said there is evidence that medical centres and doctors’ offices are not securing their medical waste for proper disposal.

Reid made it clear that collection of medical waste was not within the purview of the NSWMA.

“That waste should be incinerated at a special facility, so these medical centres should find out where this is done and arrange for the medical waste to be collected and taken to that facility,” she said.