Western Parks and Markets mobilizes to clear debris after cold front
MONTEGO BAY, St James — Western Parks and Markets (WPM) will on Tuesday reroute some of its resources to start cleaning up debris dumped on the shoreline of a number of parishes during last week’s heavy rain and winds that accompanied a cold front.
“We’ll be starting the clean-up in sections of Montego Bay. Already we have deployed members of the sanitation crew to begin to bag the garbage along the shoreline and we intend, tomorrow, to divert some of our resources such as trucks to the clean-up sites,” Edward Muir, regional manager for the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) told Observer Online on Monday.
“It will impact some of the work that we do. When a situation like this presents itself, the sea will wash the garbage over and as a result of that we have to divert our limited resources in order to have those areas clean,” he lamented.
In addition to work planned for Montego Bay, WPM — which is a regional arm of the NSWMA— will also be cleaning up debris along the coastlines of Westmoreland, Hanover and Trelawny.
Between last Monday and Thursday, adverse weather wreaked havoc in those parishes and sections of St Ann. Roads were eroded, sea walls damaged and several businesses — many in the tourism sector— were left counting their losses.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Andrew Holness told journalists that it appears that it would take a long-term effort and billions of dollars to repair the damage left to the infrastructure.
However, there has been one unexpected positive from the adverse weather. According to executive director of the Montego Bay Marine Park, Hugh Shim, the reefs have gotten a good cleaning.
“I haven’t gotten a chance to go back out to snorkel or the glass bottom boat, but I hear the fishermen saying the reefs are much cleaner and you hardly see any garbage out there,” he told Observer Online.
He stressed, however, that the ideal scenario would be for the reefs to be free of debris at all times.
“The good thing is that it came out of the sea. It’s like the sea cleaning itself but we can’t always depend on that; individuals need to be responsible,” Shim urged.
