THE National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) yesterday fired the Riverton City Trucking and Disposal Co-operative, charging that its disruption of activities at the landfill by blocking the access road to the site had endangered its operations.

The firing of the co-operative sparked a demonstration at the landfill, yesterday.

Gary Gardner, chairman of the co-operative, which supplements the activities of garbage collection contractors employed to the NSWMA, said the action was a betrayal of an agreement struck between the authority and the co-operative.

Gardner said the members of the co-operative were asked to properly equip themselves and had gone ahead and purchased tipper trucks and other equipment, only for the work to be given to new contractors.

He charged the blocking of the access road as only an excuse given NSWMA for the termination of the co-operative’s services.

In the meantime, the NSWMA’s chairman Alston Stewart has written to Commissioner of Police Francis Forbes and Chief of Staff of the Jamaica Defence Force Rear Admiral Audley Lewin requesting that a permanent security post be established at the Riverton landfill.

Stewart complained that the siphoning of hydraulic oil, lubricants and fuels directly from heavy equipment stored at the site; highjacking or diverting of trucks from the disposal site; threats to staff; arson; and other types of vandalism on site, required the establishment of the security post.

Stewart was unavailable for comment yesterday, but director of planning, research and resources development at the authority, Mellissa McHargh, said matters were brought to a head by two recent hijackings of garbage crews who were held up at gunpoint and robbed of cash and personal items, the blocking of the access road, and consistent threats to the security of the company’s staff on site.

McHargh also charged that the operations were affected by the extra costs incurred due to damage to vehicles because of the theft of fuels, which along with increased security costs compounded the problem of running and monitoring the service. However, she could not give an estimate of the additional costs.

On the issue of the firing of the Riverton Co-op, McHargh said this had resulted from their blocking of the road, apparently because of grievances over not getting formal contracts for routes in the city to collect garbage.

She explained that the situation of the co-op had actually improved as they were being paid directly by the authority, unlike the former situation where they had to collect payment from the various individual contractors.

“We used to pay the contractors to pay them. Solid Waste now pays them directly,” McHargh told the Observer.

However, Gardner said community members were protesting the dropping of the daily rate contractors earned from $10,000 daily to $7,000 per day for two trips, as well as the employment of 31 new contractors.