There has been a pile-up of garbage in Westmoreland and mayor of Savanna-la-Mar, Ralph Anglin has blamed the ministry for not keeping to its promise to provide the council with five trucks to help in the removal of solid waste.

The parish has only three trucks to transport garbage to the Retirement municipal dump in Montego Bay, and this has apparently contributed to a pile-up of garbage in the area.

At the council’s last sitting, councillors complained bitterly about the slow garbage collection and charged that the situation should be addressed with a level of urgency.

According to councillor of the Petersfield Division, Bernard Vanriel, there was a six-week pile-up in the Hertford district of his division.

“Garbage is piled up all over the division and the constituency (Central Westmoreland). The people are frustrated that there are no dump sites in the parish to dispose of their garbage and because of this the garbage is placed on the road and sometimes things that should be buried or burnt normally give off a foul odour,” he said.

Since last year’s closure of the Mount Eagle Dump Site in Grange Hill, Westmoreland, all the solid waste generated in the parish has to be trucked to the Retirement Dump Site in St James.

The parish council has also been desperately trying to identify an alternate site but to no avail.

The last site that was earmarked for the new dump did not pass the Environmental Impact Study (EIS) and therefore was not given the green light.