PM Calls for Support for Solid Waste Management Programme?? NSWMA Acquires 11 New Compactors

Prime Minister Bruce Golding is calling on Jamaicans to become partners with the government, as it embarks on its programme to re-organise, restructure and better manage solid waste. Part of this re-organisation programme, Mr. Golding said, will include the re-fleeting and expansion of the capacity of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA).
To this end, the NSWMA has acquired eleven new large garbage compactors, the first in a fleet which will see a total of 60 new compactor units being delivered to the NSWMA, to manage solid waste collection and disposal.
Mr Golding, along with the management of the NSWMA and Ministers without Portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister , Bobby Montague and Daryl Vaz, were on hand this afternoon (Feb 15) to inspect the newly arrived units imported by Vehicles and Supplies Industrial Division, which was awarded a contract to supply the compactors.
Mr Golding noted that the NSWMA had also engaged the services of other private compactors to significantly enhance the NSWMA’s operating capacity.
He said the NSWMA would now have to ensure that persons who were given the responsibility to operate these new units, recognize that they are operating vehicles that were purchased with taxpayers hard earned money and therefore must care them as if they were their own private vehicles. He called on the management of the NSWMA to ensure proper maintenance so that the vehicles can function for the period they were intended. The acquisition of the new compactors will improve waste collection and disposal and assist in alleviating threatening environmental issues recently faced by the country in the aftermath of Hurricane Dean.
Mr Golding said: ‘We we need to create a whole new culture in the society where garbage is properly packaged so that disposal can be more efficient and simpler. It is the citizens who will benefit eventually because it means that we will be able to service communities with greater frequency than we are able to do now, because we wouldn’t have to be spending so much time picking up garbage just thrown down on the road side’.
Mr. Golding congratulated the management of the NSWMA under the leadership of Joan Gordon-Webley, for the hard work being done with the restructuring and reorganization of the NSWMA. He said the restructuring is necessary if the government is to eradicate corruption because the NSWMA was one of those agencies where corruption has been festering and so changes had to be made. ‘This country now accepts that as far as this government is concerned, we have no room, no time, no accommodation for those who believe that the way to live and the way to prosper, is to do so by corrupt means’, he concluded.