REMOVAL of debris from the Old Harbour Road commenced on Monday after being left beside the roadway since last December when a drain-cleaning exercise was carried out in the adjacent Homestead community.

Babsy Grange, MP for the area, told the Observer that the debris was inadvertently left beside the road after the cleaning of drains was done inside Homestead before the Christmas holidays.

“The contractor let us down,” Grange said, adding that he never turned up to remove the debris after it was taken out of the drain.

Grange said that in December members of the community, through the Community Social Intervention Programme (CSIP), cleaned drains in Homestead, as well as the one running adjacent to the Old Harbour Road, to allow for the removal of stagnant water and mitigate flooding.

“CSI funded it and the community did the cleaning,” Grange said.

But the act of self-sufficiency, however, turned into a major hazard along the Old Harbour Road where the debris was piled and remained for almost a month alongside the main thoroughfare.

The mounds of dirt and garbage left at the roadside, apart from being unsightly, impeded the free flow of pedestrian and vehicular traffic along the roadway close to the Willowdene and Homestead communities.

Councillor of the Homestead division and deputy mayor of Spanish Town, Owen Palmer, who was on hand at yesterday’s removal of the debris, emphasised that the drain-cleaning was a self-help effort.

“Even when the drains inside the community are clean, the water still backs up down here so we had to take out the garbage,” Palmer said.

“We were trying to help a situation,” he added.