MONTEGO BAY, St James — Mayor of Montego Bay Richard Vernon has announced a new initiative, called MoBay STEP Up, aimed at ridding the city streets of waste in all its forms.

Starting with a clean-up of illegal dump sites this Sunday, it will also include a crackdown on workshop operators — but not before an effort to get them to comply with the law.

According to Vernon, workshop operators are being invited to an April 22 meeting ahead of the crackdown that will begin in May.

“If you know that you operating a wood workshop, a metal shop, spray shop, garage, any type of workshop that is across this municipality, you need to be at this meeting so that we can have a discussion before we carry out the enforcement exercise,” said Vernon.

He was speaking on Thursday during the monthly meeting of the St James Municipal Corporation.

The STEP in MoBay STEP Up is an acronym for striving towards environmental protection. The goal is for the local authority to enforce existing legislation that can address some of the issues that negatively impact residents’ quality of life.

“We are also seeing an increase in the improper disposal of toxic waste, and I’m referring to the operators who continue to service vehicles and throw the oil in the drains that lead to the sea and rivers,” the mayor lamented.

He said the programme will also tackle overall waste management within the city and surrounding areas.

“We have increases in illegal dumpsters…we are seeing an increase in litter as we move across the town centre on a day-to-day basis despite the efforts of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) to sweep, containerise and dispose of garbage,” he noted.

Business operators who flaunt regulations that speak to waste disposal will also come in for their fair share of scrutiny, according to Vernon.

“We will be checking all businesses in the town centre and beyond the immediate town centre to ensure that they have their contracts for waste disposal, or they have the books to demonstrate that they have their receipts or anything that can prove that they have waste management protocols in place,” he said.

“These are serious infractions and that is why when we identify those challenges, we have to come up with programmes that will focus on addressing them,” the mayor explained.

Part of the MoBay STEP Up programme will include increasing the cadre of workers who will do waste management.

“We have identified the funding and we will be employing the persons assigned to a roving team to carry out continuous cleaning in conjunction with our sweepers from the NSWMA,” Vernon revealed.

The plan is to start with a clean slate and maintain a certain level of cleanliness going forward.

“We will be doing, this Sunday, a massive clean-up around town to eradicate the illegal dump sites and that is the first step which is to clean up,” the mayor said.

“Then we will continue with sanitisation. We will be washing our main streets and this is something that we want to continue over a long period of time,” he continued.

Vernon insisted that this is not just a one-off project but a programme that will be sustained.

“When we have these things MoBay has to step up. Too many illegal dump sites, MoBay must step up; too many infractions, MoBay must step up,” he declared.