There is great merit in the recommendation by the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI) that the country is in urgent need of a general waste-management strategy.

For, as the public policy think tank has pointed out, the country’s problem with effective waste management is larger than what obtains at the Riverton dump. While the full CaPRI study has not yet been released, the University of the West Indies-based institute has made a number of recommendations that, we believe, can guide the Government towards implementing an effective waste-management service.

What is clear to us, though, is that the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), as it is currently structured, is incapable of providing the type of efficient, professional service that the people of this country deserve.

Basically, the NSWMA is a highly politicised organisation in which the party that forms the Government places some of its loyalists to — using a phrase so succinctly coined by the man in the street — “eat a food”.

Add to that the trough that is the Riverton dump, from which political pork is distributed in the form of transporting dirt to put out fires that are not accidental, and what we have here are two trees from which people genetically connected to both political parties feed.

It doesn’t matter to them or their political masters that their actions cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Neither do they care that, in the most recent case, the health of more than 600 Jamaican citizens, including schoolchildren, is affected. As long as they are paid and the votes are cast is all that counts.

Such is life at the dump that it can scarcely attract highly qualified managers not connected to the parties, because of party toughs and street hoodlums who rule the area.

Any Government serious about ensuring the health and safety of the people it was elected to serve would, we expect, implement measures to avoid the repeated debacle of the Riverton dump.

As the CaPRI study has pointed out, in 2007 the annual cost of managing the dump was an estimated $6 billion, or nearly $16.8 million daily. That cost is met by taxpayers. CaPRI also noted that the close proximity of the Riverton watershed to mangroves and the Duhaney River results in water pollution at those sites, as well as in the Hunt’s Bay area. In addition, heavy metal and pesticide contamination are at high levels, while the frequency of fires at Riverton has led to air pollution.

“Ambient air quality monitoring revealed the presence of nitrogen dioxide, volatile organic compounds and sulphur dioxide in high concentration in the surrounding areas,” CaPRI said.

The upshot, the think tank pointed out, is that people living in and around Riverton are afflicted with respiratory problems, cardiac illnesses, disorientation, and dizziness.

No country that is serious about its growth and development can continue like this. The Government needs to look past the politics and start the process of privatising the country’s waste-management services. At the same time, the State must, as CaPRI correctly pointed out, ensure that watersheds are operated within the ambit of the law and that any breach of the law is prosecuted.