THE Public Health Department yesterday said it found no evidence that Rentalot Equipment Limited, a company that rents portable toilets, was causing discomfort to its neighbours on Derrymore Road in Kingston.

“We observed some toilet receptacles at the site, but there were no offensive odours or flies,” a public health inspector, who did not wish to be named, told the Observer yesterday.

The Health Department sent its inspectors to Rentalot yesterday in response to complaints from residents in the area that the company’s operations were giving off an offensive odour. According to the residents, the portable toilets were being cleaned on the company premises.

But Karl Miller, Rentalot’s managing director, told the Observer that the toilets are not cleaned at the head office, rather, their contents are vacuumed wherever the toilets are used and taken to a sewage plant in Greenwich Town.

“We don’t clean the toilets on the site here, because we evacuate the toilets in vacuum trucks and they are deposited with the National Water Commission’s sewage plant in Greenwich Town,” Miller said.

According to the public health inspector, the only cleaning that the company does at its base is the hosing down of the outside of the receptacles and the department has recommended that the firm builds a concrete drain for this purpose.

“They hose down the external surfaces of the toilets which may have dust or dirt, but if he (Miller) is washing them, it has to be channelled through a pipe to a proper trapped septic or absorption pit, so that no odours or insects can escape,” the inspector said.