KINGSTON, Jamaica — Mayor of the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC), Andrew Swaby, has issued a call for Minister Matthew Samuda to partner with the KSAMC to tackle a long-standing sewage issue in the municipality.

Swaby, who toured downtown Kingston on Thursday morning to assess the sewage-affected areas, disclosed that the KSAMC has, on several occasions, extended an invitation to Samuda, the minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, with responsibility for water, but is yet to receive a response.

“KSAMC has been talking about the sewage issue for quite some time now. Today, I’ve invited public health and the NWC — and I’m sorry to say that the NWC is a no-show today — just to talk to us. I want to show them what exists, what the vendors, what our citizens are facing. I want to show them, and for the second time now, the NWC is a no-show to this situation,” Swaby shared.

“I’ve gone as far as inviting the minister, who has responsibility for the NWC, from last year to come and speak to the council about the long-term plans for the switch in downtown and in Kingston as a whole, not just downtown. And he has not responded so far. Minister, this is not about the KCAMC. This is about the citizens of Kingston and St Andrew. They deserve better, and I want us to work together to see how best we can alleviate the problem,” Swaby continued.

The mayor said the sewage situation is a public health crisis in the downtown Kingston commercial district, where vendors conduct business.

“It has been quite some time, two years or so, I have been talking to people on the minority, and I’m still talking about it. The KSAMC doesn’t have the responsibility, but the KSAMC has the overall responsibility for the management of the city, and that allows the KSAMC to step in and pull all the stakeholders together to get it done. It is a health crisis. It is a health crisis. The public health has said so, and we don’t need the public health or the minister of health to tell us. It is,” Swaby said.

He explained, “You can have a situation where people are planning their wares and, right beside them, is the stench that is coming out. It can’t work. And we as a city and the government have to sit down and see how best we can deal with it.”

Chief Public Health Inspector for Kingston and St Andrew, Grayson Hutchinson, who also toured downtown Kingston, described the sewage situation as “unacceptable” and noted that he intends to meet with the NWC to discuss plans to have the situation corrected.

“I am aware that there are a number of manholes which become blocked and overflow with sewage from time to time, and so the officers from the Health Department would have decided to take a tour to identify these blocked manholes which are overflowing in an effort to determine a course of action. It is our intention to meet with the representatives of the National Water Commission in an effort to determine the plans they have in place to address the situation. We know that there is a long-term plan which is to replace the old sewer lines, but at the same time, there needs to be short-term and medium-term plans to deal with the situation,” he said.

“We know that whenever it rains, there’s a tendency for there to be infiltration of the manholes, which would contribute to the blockage. It, therefore, means that the NWC has to be proactive. There has to be an emergency response plan in place, there needs to be a maintenance programme, and there needs to be a monitoring programme to address all issues that develop as quickly as possible,” Hutchinson added.