THE National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), yesterday reiterated its need for additional trucks to help with the clean-up activities in the aftermath of Hurricane Dean.

“Twenty-nine compactors went down yesterday [Tuesday], so we’re trying to source as many as we can outside the system,” the agency’s community relations manager, Michael Richards, told the Observer yesterday.

He said the shortage of trucks and the malfunctioning of others were seriously hurting the NSWMA’s garbage-collection functions, especially the clearing of domestic waste.

“As far as hurricane debris is concerned, we’re moving right along. We’re well advanced and we’ve done quite a bit,” said Richards, listing some of the major thoroughfares that have already been cleared. Some of them are Constant Spring Road, Windward Road and sections of Spanish Town Road.

“Where we are having a major problem is with normal domestic garbage because we have to be collecting that too,” he added.

According to the NSWMA, some residents have taken to dumping their garbage on the streetside which has only served to compound the problem.

“We’re only concentrating on the main roads for now but until that’s complete, we have an added challenge because people keep bringing it (waste) out onto the streets because they don’t see us coming down onto the side streets,” he said.

“We get calls all the time saying we are not doing anything but that’s not true,” he stressed, reiterating the agency’s position to concentrate on major towns and thoroughfares to clear debris caused by the hurricane.

Nevertheless, some of the major thoroughfares in the corporate area have still not been cleared. Sections of Spanish Town Road, Washington Boulevard and Red Hills Road – where two men whose patience had apparently run out, yesterday took to burning the rubble – still have piles of fallen trees and other debris on the sides of the roadways.

Several communities in areas such as Richmond Park, Cooreville Gardens, Duhaney Park, Eastwood Park Gardens, Meadowbrook Estate, and Red Hills Gardens still have pile-ups as well.