Western body faces criticism over failure to collect garbage

WESTERN BUREAU:

With areas within Hanover having garbage uncollected for up to one month still awaiting service, Western Parks and Markets Waste Management Limited (WPMWML) has been told in no uncertain terms that it is failing the parish.

The lack of proper and efficient garbage collection across the parish had prompted councillors in the Hanover Municipal Corporation (HMC), during the May monthly meeting, to issue a directive for a letter to be written requesting someone at management level within WPMWML attend its next monthly meeting.

Public Cleansing Manager at WPMWML, Mark Jones, responded to the HMC’s letter at the June meeting, but with no good news. Instead, he acknowledged, waste collection in the parish has continued to deteriorate.

The number of districts across the parish with uncollected garbage has been growing steadily over the last three months, with residents in some areas having to burn their waste to get rid of it.

“Comparing over the past three months, May has been our worst month so far,” Jones reported to the meeting, adding that three government-owned units were used by his agency to service the parish.

He gave a number of reasons, describing them as external factors affecting production within his agency.

However, councillors reiterated that the agency has been inefficient in waste collection.

Jones noted that some of the factors affecting WPMWML were narrow roadways, hilly terrain, poor solid waste disposal practices, illegal dump sites, shortage of drivers and sidemen for the waste collection units and poorly contained solid waste from commercial establishment and schools.

What Jones did not mention, however, was the backlog of uncollected garbage as listed on a written report from his agency, which showed that, in March, there were 25 districts within the parish with uncollected garbage. In April, there were 35 such districts and then, for May, 47.

At the end of his reporting, Jones was taken to task by the councillors, all expressing disgust with the inefficiencies of WPMWML, a subsidiary of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA).

Lennox Fray, councillor in the Hopewell division, pointed out that he has districts in his division that have not seen a garbage collection unit in over a month, and that residents have now resorted to burning their waste.

Meanwhile, Wynter McIntosh of the Chester Castle division, while having some of the same concerns as Fray’s, pointed to health issues that can occur because of the garbage back-up, making special mention of the rat infestation which is now taking place across the parish.

Numerous complaints

With 22 of the districts having their garbage uncollected in eastern Hanover and 25 in the western section of the parish, according to the submitted written report, it was more of the same from each councillor, all mentioning numerous complaints from residents.

Brian Chambers, councillor for the Lucea division, noted that the Labour Day project of the WPMWML, which was to demolish a garbage skip located at the entrance to Haughton Meadows, and turn the area into a flower garden, will soon come to nought as drums issued to residents for placing garbage at their gates are not being collected. Chambers said he has heard threats about residents planning to throw uncollected garbage in the newly created garden area.

Deputy Mayor of Lucea and councillor for the Sandy Bay division in the HMC, Andria Dehaney-Grant, who was chairing the meeting, made mention of the fact that Hanover is one of the leading parishes with respect to property tax payments, while arguing that the parish is deserving of better services.

“When you do not collect the garbage, the people curse us councillors that we are not doing our work,” she commented.

She said that, at the last Public Health and Sanitation Committee meeting held in the HMC, the discussions surrounded an eradication programme for rat infestation now occurring because of the uncollected garbage.

“The cost for such a programme happens to be millions of dollars, and if it is that we have all the money we should be using it to do something better than killing rats,” she opined, adding that the solution to the problem would be “the proper collection of the source of food for the rats, which is the garbage”.

“It is the right of every citizen that their garbage is collected,” she stated.

editorial@gleanerjm.com