Householders urged to clean up their act

Two years after becoming executive director of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), Jennifer Edwards still enjoys steering the state agency responsible for the orderly collection and disposal of garbage generated by more than two and a half million persons each day.

It is a job she describes as full of challenges, with "no two days the same".

While the NSWMA grapples with sometimes crippling equipment and staff shortages, its task of keeping Jamaica clean is made much more difficult by the failure of some of the people it serves to observe simple rules.

Waste management is everyone's business, according to the NSWMA head, but not enough of its constituents recognise this and so complicate an already difficult job.

Personal responsibility

"For me, waste management is a personal responsibility and I would expect that citizens are going to assist us to do a good job by the way they containerise and store their waste in a manner that allows for it to be collected in good time - not thrown down on the road side for us to be scooping it up off the road every time that we have to do it," Edwards said.

She added: "We have 1.6 million tonnes of garbage to collect per year, so we do have a lot of work to do, and that garbage is generated every day. When we collect garbage at 6 o'clock, at 6:30 there is garbage to be collected again. So it's an ongoing thing with a lot of challenges, and the institution is very short of financial and human resources, but we keep our heads above water."

While admitting that sometimes they deviate from the routine, Edwards said most trucks have a routine collection day and time and householders can help by working with the established schedule for garbage collection.

Put out waste on time

She urged: "Put out your waste at that time. Don't leave it on the road for us tomorrow morning after we have left today. Then it is there for three, four, five, six days scattered out because the truck doesn't come back until that time. You know that your garbage is collected on a Friday, put it out on a Friday, not on a Saturday and leave it out for a whole week."

On the issue of animal carcasses on the roadway, the NSWMA executive director said it was the agency's responsibility to remove them, but again, the public has a role to play.

"Once we are called, we collect and dispose of it. So people need to call and let us know - once it is on the main road. However, if it is your pet, you have responsibility for it. You don't cause your pet to be on the road and when it gets killed, you leave it there, nobody takes it up or even calls to say it is there."

christopher.serju.@gleanerjm.com