THE National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) has no system to weigh the amount of garbage collected at the eight disposal sites it operates across the island, but has doled out close to $6 billion in payment to independent contractors over two financial years, increasing its spend on supplementary fleet by 32 per cent.

These are some of the findings of the Auditor General’s Department performance audit of the authority, which was tabled in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis, in the report, said the authority expended $5.7 billion between 2016 and 2017, and 2021 and 2022 to pay independent contractors to supplement its fleet of trucks used for collection and disposal of solid waste across the island.

Over the period, the total spend on independent contractors moved to $1.1 billion in 2021/22, up from $815 million in 2016/17.

The report noted that the NSWMA made these payments based on the number of trips, instead of the volume of waste collected. Monroe Ellis pointed out that the NSWMA has no accurate way of measuring the volume of waste it collects, and that with the absence of an efficient weigh-in system, her department could not be assured of the reliability of the volume of waste the agency said it collected between 2017 and 2020.

For the period, the NSWMA’s data showed that it collected an average of 85 per cent of the 1.1 million tonnes of waste generated for the period, exceeding its target which was set at just 70 per cent.

Monroe Ellis explained that the NSWMA dispatched tickets on which the amount of solid waste collected is to be recorded, but the audit found that this information wasn’t recorded at the disposal sites.

The team said although the disposal site attendants are required to indicate whether the trucks are full, half full, three-quarters full, or quarter full, the field “full” was always ticked, which leads the NSWMA to assume the tonnage of solid waste collected based on truck capacity, without a weigh-in system.

The report said that of the eight disposal sites which the authority operates, only the Riverton disposal site in St Andrew has a weigh-in scale to measure waste volume of each truck. It noted, however, that although the NSWMA spent US$41,444 to purchase a scale in December 2015, and indicated that it had done a test run between July 2016 and January 2017, the data provided to her team shows that the scale hasn’t been used since.

The NSWMA indicated on the procurement request for the scale that it would revise its rates and make payments on a per tonnage basis, but the audit report noted that this had not materialised, as the authority “did not provide any evidence that it made payments to independent supplementary fleet contractors on a per tonne basis during the period was the scale was in use”.

In the meantime, complaints continued to mount about non-collection of garbage and illegal dumping. The authority’s records show that it received 13,368 complaints from citizens about non-collection, a 55 per cent increase between 2017 and 2021.

“Reports of non-collection periods ranged from a low of one week to a high of over four weeks, with the majority reporting delays in solid waste collection of two weeks,” Monroe Ellis noted. The NSWMA said the delays were due to resource constraints, mainly trucks, which had forced it to reduce collection to once weekly in 2016/17. Still the report pointed out that citizens complained of non-collection for periods of over four weeks during that time frame.

“Our analysis of complaints received by the NSWMA revealed considerable increase in the number of calls reporting acts of illegal dumping,” the report said. The authority said there were 261 complaints of illegal dumping between April 2017 and March 2022.

Auditors pointed out that with the high rate of waste generation and the NSWMA’s expectation that 30 per cent of it will not be collected, there is increased potential for illegal burning or dumping.