MONTEGO BAY, St James — With an unsightly illegal garbage dump replaced by plants and the area monitored by CCTV to keep away litterbugs, several residents in and around Dome Street in Montego Bay are now fully on board with the municipal corporation’s STEP Up programme.

“It never look good — and you have a church right there, business over there and people live over that side,” said Leon White who operates a business in the area.

He said the changes made were long overdue.

“Yea man it good because before, some people a dump all sort of things in there; pople all dump them building material there,” he explained.

On April 14, St James Municipal Corporation, in collaboration with Western Parks and Market (WPM), the regional arm of National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), removed a skip that was at the location. It was part of a clean-up activity announced under the MoBay STEP Up initiative.

STEP is an acronym for Striving Towards Environmental Protection, a massive undertaking that is expected to clean up the parish capital.

A man who sells fruits in the Dome Street area was equally impressed by the transformation.

“It’s a good look, man; is a good look,” said the man who opted not to provide his name.

However, he and White stressed that there needs to be regularly scheduled garbage collection in the area.According to White, he has had two bags of garbage in his business place for a while now because he has not seen the garbage collectors doing regular pickups in the area since the change.

The other man said he has seen the truck, but they didn’t assist him.

“I call to them to stop so I can give them the garbage but them never stop. When I got to speak to one of them, them say I should use a drum around the corner. But I won’t do that; a people drum that,” he said.

When the issue was raised with WPM the Jamaica Observer was told that residents should have no challenges as WPM trucks do regularly scheduled pickups in the area.

“The roadway is good and the streets are wide, and therefore the trucks can go through and collect the garbage,” WMP community relations officer Sharnon Williams told the Observer.

“What we will, however, do is speak to the cleaning team to determine the best days for pickup, and then we will broadcast that so that individuals can be in the know,” she said..

Another aspect of the MoBay STEP Up programme seeks to minimise waste produced and improperly disposed of by workshop operators in the city.

On Monday, mayor of Montego Bay, Councillor Richard Vernon met with those stakeholders to educate them about the changes coming and what is expected of them.

According to the mayor, those light industrial operators have to fall in line to ensure that their activities are not harming the environment nor impacting those who live and work nearby.

“For example, in areas such as Duke Street and Thompson Street persons will call in and say that the vapour from the spray, or some other form of nuisance coming from the operations, is affecting them in the community,” he told the Observer.

“We still have to bear in mind that these areas are mixed-use areas [part-residential, part-commercial] so from time to time there will be conflicts of interest within the space. And because of that, we have a responsibility to ensure that while a person decides to reside in the space, we also have to manage how businesses carry out operations in the space,” Vernon said.

He said the local authority will be working to develop regulations that will guide how these operators work.

“An output from the continuous consultation is to come up with a proposal for a regulation that will cover the operations of these workshops — safety in particular — and to prevent further environmental hazards,” he added.

Some operators who attended the meeting welcomed the move and have indicated that they will be working to ensure that they meet the requirements that will be set out.

“Yes, of course we should adhere because our environment faces it. If we don’t protect our environment now, then we are going to have serious implications years after that affect us also,” said auto repair technician Osbourne Grant.

“We have to just follow the rules and the law because they guide us. I don’t really have a problem with it, I just have to adjust to it because the law of the land is just the law of the land,” he added.