Jennifer Edwards has taken a lot of flak for complaining that the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) does not have enough resources to effectively do its job.

Proper maintenance, some people have said, will go a far way in improving efficiencies at the State-run agency responsible for garbage collection and disposal.

Edwards, the agency’s executive director who was last Wednesday told by board chairman Steve Ashley that her extended contract would not be renewed, has also been accused of not being aggressive in going after commercial contracts that could help the NSWMA meet some of its bills.

But last Thursday, Edwards, who is set to leave office on March 26, countered that claim and spoke to the resource difficulties plaguing the agency she has led since February 2012.

“The current budget that we are operating on, that will come to an end in a couple of days’ time, is $1.8 billion,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

“The last time that the NSWMA got $1.8 billion was 2005. It went up to as high as 4.2 [billion dollars] and it came down after that to a low of, I think, 2.2 [billion dollars] in 2010/11,” she said.

“We need 274 trucks, each doing two trips per day, to collect the garbage that is generated in Jamaica every day. We have 55 broken down old ones,” Edwards explained.

“…but literally every day I can guarantee you that at least four or five of them will be out of service, and when they go out it is going to take you a good two weeks to bring them back out because parts are not always sitting here in Jamaica,” she continued.

“So… since we have a challenge with trucks we have to manage the extent to which we go out and seek commercial clients, because we are finding that we are seeking and getting the clients and we are not able to service them and that puts us in a very bad light, as we have commercial clients calling and complaining because we haven’t come and collected,” Edwards lamented.

She said that despite that challenge, the NSWMA earns near $300 million a year in commercial services.

“But, if it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t be able to buy petrol each week for the garbage trucks, because the support that we get from the Ministry of Local Government does not allow us to include fuel in it. So what you get pays for the additional trucks that you need, it pays to push and spread the garbage on the disposal site, and we have had to cut the hours sometimes to fit within the budget,” Edwards said.

“From that $300 million we are spending roughly $24 million per month on petrol. Now, 55 trucks, $24 million, you’re really talking about $5,000 per day for a truck doing the amount of work that our trucks do daily; they are spending eight/nine hours in the field collecting waste, and some of them have to travel long distances to get to the disposal site,” Edwards explained.

She said she had no doubt that the NSWMA could improve on efficiency it had “better quality trucks”.

“If it wasn’t for that additional work that we do we would not have been able to keep those 55 units in operation, and so I have been very careful not to overextend ourselves, although we would like to,” she added.

Edwards also said she has secured additional income-earning jobs from a few other Government agencies, such as the CHASE Fund and the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF).

“We’re not going to get a lot of money out of the JSIF project, because it wasn’t our project, but at least we have been able to recognise in the project, up front, a solid waste management component, so we know that we will get two trucks, we will get some bins, we will get some assistance with public education from that project,” Edwards said.

She also said that she has gone herself to the Ministry of Finance seeking funds for the NSWMA and was assured that in the next financial year $250 million would be set aside for the solid waste agency to get a few trucks.

“We’ve gone to the EU (European Union) to see how they can assist us. Right now, we are working on a project with them that we hope that they will give us even one more unit in St Thomas,” she said, adding that her agency has also worked with the Urban Development Corporation and received one truck from that effort.

“So, if it wasn’t for that kind of effort I don’t know how we would have managed,” she said.

EDWARDS… says at least four trucks are out of service daily