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Failure to use ‘official dumpsite’ could lead to prosecution
By Sharmain Cornette
City Hall has not authorised the unofficial collection of garbage in the city. As a result, anyone found dumping garbage at any location other than the Le Repentir dumpsite will be prosecuted.
Public Relations Officer, Royston King, revealed yesterday that the municipality is viewing with great concern an inventive development which is not necessarily a solution to the garbage problem in the city.
An unauthorised mode of waste collection in the city
According to King, it has been brought to City Hall’s attention that there are some people who have converted the current dilemma into a money-making scheme by charging residents a fee to collect their garbage.
“We have not authorised this collection. So we are a bit concerned about the absence of mechanisms to control this activity because we don’t want the horse-drawn carts and other vehicles picking up the garbage and just dumping it all over the place. They can’t dump it at any other place than the landfill site,” King asserted.
He related that the kind of vehicles being utilised by the unauthorised collectors are in some cases not fit to carry out such a task, as the mounted waste material would spill on to the roadside while in transit.
“We can’t control how this is being done, we know that citizens are making use of it and we couldn’t tell them not to make use of it because we ourselves are handicapped at this time to do anything better.”
Private garbage collectors – Puran Waste Disposal Service and Cevons Waste Management Incorporated – contracted by the municipality, have just over two weeks ago withdrawn most of their services from the municipality.
However, yesterday they upped the ante by withdrawing their service from the Stabroek Market, a move which will be extended to the Bourda Market by tomorrow if no money is made available. Another contractor, Crawler and Wheeler, who is tasked with grading the waste at the dumpsite, has also threatened to engage strike action today due to the lack of payment. The municipality owes the contractors in excess of $75M.
But until the situation returns to some level of normalcy, King said that the Council is appealing to residents to urge the unauthorised collectors to transport their garbage only to the official dumpsite. He related that the municipality is suspicious that some of the collectors are in fact dumping the waste they collect in an indiscriminate manner.
As such, he highlighted the need for persons engaged in the collection activities to first of all consider their responsibility and recognise the need to take the waste only to the landfill site. And once such persons comply, King said that they will not be required to pay the regular tipping fee at the dumpsite, but rather will be able to offload their waste free of cost.
“This is being done just because of this situation we are in and to encourage these collectors to dispose waste at the dumpsite and not on the roadways.”
In order to rid their immediate environs of accumulated garbage, residents of the city have, over the past few days, been willing to pay fees as high as $500 per receptacle to the unauthorised collectors. However, it has been observed that the waste around the city has been increasing significantly, leading to the municipality’s belief that the collectors are the prime suspects.
But there are some communities, according to King, where residents have over time developed the unethical practice of indiscriminate dumping.
The PRO, during a recent interview with this newspaper, had related that an unofficial dumpsite at the corner of Sussex and Ketley Streets in Charlestown, Georgetown, is a typical example. King opined that the situation in Charlestown is not merely as a result of the garbage crisis but rather is a community problem. He revealed that it has been observed that even when there is regular garbage collection persons in that area still prefer to dump rubbish on the corner rather than in receptacles.
After some tabulation yesterday, King was able to deduce that on a regular basis the municipality pays close to $1M a day for the service of garbage collection and disposal, a development to which the council has already started to direct much attention.
“Perhaps this crisis also presents an opportunity for the city council to reflect on contractual arrangements to see if the service we pay for can’t be provided at more reasonable rate by the council.”
Since the withdrawal of the contractors, the municipality has engaged its own garbage collection team, drawn from its Solid Waste Management Department.
The team has been collecting garbage from sections of central Georgetown including schools and hospitals, a move which will now have to be incorporated at the two major municipal markets.
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