Head of NSWMA Refutes Claims

Executive Director of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), Audley Gordon, has refuted claims that their contractors have been disposing of garbage near the residential section of Riverton City (Riverton Meadows).

Speaking at a press briefing on Thursday (October 12) at the Riverton disposal site located off Spanish Town Road in St. Andrew, Mr. Gordon said recent negative reports in the media about their operations are not true.

“A lot has been said about happenings at the Riverton disposal site, and the impression could have been given that everything has broken down… and we are destroying the livelihood and injuring the health of the residents here. Also, allegations were made of a strike by our heavy-duty equipment operators. I say, unequivocally, that at no time did we dispose of any garbage among the residents or the residential dwellings of the people of Riverton City,” Mr. Gordon said.

“What caused a problem was that there was an issue with the softening of our road network within the disposal site. It was creating problems for the trucks to navigate their way to the disposal site, so it’s a chain of events and it created the pile-up, and we had to find an alternative,” he explained.

Mr. Gordon said the recent disruption in Jamaica’s weather conditions, especially with heavy rains, caused a setback at Riverton’s disposal site and forced them to create alternative solutions.

“We took a management decision to immediately change that tipping phase to a nearer point as you enter. You would have less travelling to do on the soft ground to the old tipping phase,” Mr. Gordon said.

The Executive Director also dispelled the allegation about heavy-duty equipment contractors on strike.

“On Tuesday (October 10), our major piece of equipment that we have here broke down. That created a problem with the spreading of the garbage, and so the garbage backed up at the new phase that we have opened up as a contingency. With that happening, it came to a point where we could no longer get the trucks into the tipping phase, and we had to take a decision where else to put them. There was no strike of any operator,” he declared.

Mr. Brown said his team is working towards getting the operations of the Riverton disposal site back to what it was before the rumours began.

“We have cleaned up the temporary area and we are getting back to some normalcy,” he said.