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Increased waste forces M&CC to add five acres to dumpsite
Efforts are made to compress garbage
The Mayor and City Council of Georgetown (M&CC) has been forced to add five acres of cemetery land to the Le Repentir dumpsite in order to expand the capacity of the garbage dumping facility.
This disclosure was made yesterday by Deputy Mayor Robert Williams, during an interview with this newspaper.
According to Williams, the move had become inevitable since it had become evident that the substantial volume of waste dumped there was overwhelming the site, a situation which could have been further compounded by the increased waste expected to be generated during this Christmas season.
The Deputy Mayor said that it is the anticipation of the municipality that the additional space would be sufficient for waste deposits until the closure of the site comes to fruition.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a few years ago, offered a grant of US$18M for the construction of a new landfill site at Haags Bosch.
The Bank has been involved in solid waste management in Guyana since 1999, when the government requested support to address the then-acute problem of solid waste disposal in Georgetown.
Over the past six years, the IDB and the Government of Guyana have adopted a series of measures to remedy the problem. These include rehabilitating the interim Le Repentir site, establishing a Municipal Solid Waste Management Department in the Municipality of Georgetown, conducting a public awareness campaign in Georgetown and the Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs), and reviewing and improving the contracts for solid waste collection in the city.
The IDB decided to fund the project in order to improve the quality of the residents of metropolitan Georgetown, through sustainable solutions for solid waste management. It was also stipulated by the IDB that the construction and operation contract for the landfill site be awarded to a private company to be selected through competitive bidding.
Williams said that currently the processing of the loan has begun and the implementation work of sourcing contractors and other requirements of the contract is ongoing in keeping with the loan agreement.
The project was initially slated to have been completed in 2010 but according to the Deputy Mayor, “we have a little difficulty with that…We think it may go beyond.”
Based on the numerous delays which have materialised since the approval of the loan, Williams speculated that the municipality may not be able to even utilise the site immediately even if it is completed in 2010.
At the moment the Le Repentir Site is the primary dumping site which facilitates the city and out of town areas. However, according to Williams there are also a few temporary landfill sites that are being utilised.
These sites, he said, are located on the East Coast and East Bank of Demerara and are currently being used by private contractors.
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