THE National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) says it will be taking immediate steps to put a stop to activities at the site of an illegal dump in Bedward Gardens in August Town, St Andrew.

“Anyone caught dumping here will pay dearly; the law is quite clear as it relates to dumping and who operates dumps [so] we will have to enforce the law. We cannot allow this threat, this huge threat to the environment to continue,” said chief technical officer at the NSWMA, Audley Gordon.

“Our enforcement team, working in collaboration with the police, will have to open their eyes wider and be more vigilant so we can try and catch somebody,” he said. “If we catch the first one and try and make an example, then we will be on our way [so] the enforcement team is charged to put this as their number one priority and to go at it with everything that they have,” he said.

Gordon, accompanied by a team from the NSWMA and other agencies during a tour of the dump Wednesday, said that an investigation would be launched to find out who were the people behind the operation of the illegal dump.

Said Gordon: “This is a big dump; this did not accumulate overnight or over one or two months. This look like several years.

“This must be something that is dealt with as a matter of priority and we will be bringing all the arms of Government to deal with it.”

Gordon, who also took note of a nearby informal settlement and illegal sand mining at the dump site, said that those matters will also be addressed following consultations with the people involved and all the relevant stakeholders.

At the sane time, Charles Simpson, director of compliance and enforcement at the NSWMA, said, “Our first plan of action is to thoroughly investigate and to find out as much as we possibly can as to the genesis of it, who is doing it, who is breaking the law, and to take the appropriate action”.

Simpson said that the team, following consultation will the other relevant stakeholders, ,will devise a strategy to deal with the issue, which he described as a “clear and present danger”.

“And soon as we have that in place we will be working assiduously,” he added.

Wednesday’s tour followed a report in the media that the dump was being operated by thugs in the community who reportedly collect money from truck drivers to dump their waste at the site.

However, while the NSWMA and other agencies appeared to have been in the dark about the illegal dump, Inspector Steven Taylor from the August Town Police Station told the

Jamaica Observer that the police have known about the problem for years and have written to several agencies, including the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation, but the matter was not addressed.

The police, he said, will continue to educate people about illegal dumping and patrol the area to ensure that dumping is discontinued.

Meanwhile, residents of August Town, who were nearby while the tour was going on, were noticeably upset about reports that the illegal dump was being controlled by “thugs” and that the dump was on top of a playing field.

“Nutten no go so ’bout no thugs; no thugs no deh yah,” said one resident, who said that even before the imprisonment of a former reputed community leader “anybody can go dump off a truck and collect”.

“No playing field never deh deh (over there) in the first place; is a inna the road the youths dem play,” another man said.

According to the residents, the area that is being used for the dump was actually a gully that they have dumped up so that they can get the space to build a community centre.

“A we create the land and a build we a try build something so that the children can have something to motivate them,” one man said.

However, they admitted that people in the community have been collecting money from truck drivers who dump construction waste on the land, noting that the money that is collect is used to pay for the services of tractor to level off the land.