City moves to acquire own garbage trucks

Jul 13, 2017 News

…as contractors agree to return

Cevons Waste Management and Puran Brothers Disposal have resumed their garbage collection services across the city, following talks with the Mayor and City Council (M&CC).

City Mayor, Patricia Chase-Green and Director of Solid Waste, Walter Narine

Mayor of Georgetown, Patricia Chase-Green made the official announcement during a press briefing yesterday at the City Hall, Regent Street.
“I am happy to say that as I speak they have resumed duties, both contractors have resumed work,” the Mayor disclosed.
The garbage collectors on Friday, July 7, pulled their services from Georgetown over the Mayor and City Council (M&CC)’s failure to pay them more than $300M owed since 2015.
The Mayor explained that the M&CC is still in negotiations with both Cevons Waste Management and Puran Brothers Disposal towards working out a strategy for settling the outstanding debts. She also said that the council is taking steps to avoid having a similar disruption of garbage service in the future.
The Council will be seeking to boost its capacity to better deliver the service itself, the Mayor said.
“A team has been set up to look at all the details of our new plan into having our own garbage trucks, even if we start with one or two, come 2018, so we can move forward in that direction,” she noted.
However, the Mayor stated that several things will have to be in place before this could happen, including the M&CC having its own workshop and employees to maintain the vehicles.
Director of Solid Waste, Walter Narine, was in agreement with the Mayor of the need for the City to strengthen its solid waste collection capacity.
“We do not foresee 10 to 15 years from now, private contractors doing garbage collection for the city, because we have to save cost, we have employees and we are paying employees every month. So I do not foresee that in the future” he stated.
Additionally, the Solid Waste Director said that persons are producing more garbage than the 45-gallon barrel per week. Narine said this prompted a move by the M&CC to distribute garbage bins to households within the city.
“What we are going to do to combat that, we are hoping very soon to give each household an additional garbage bin so that they can store the refuse,” Narine stated.
The bins, according to Narine, are available, and will soon be distributed to every household in the city along with garbage bags.

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