WITH public frustration mounting over uncollected garbage, Kingston Mayor Andrew Swaby has called for the decentralisation of waste management in Jamaica, proposing that the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) act solely as a regulatory body, while local authorities manage garbage collection.

“The current approach to waste management is not working, and the public is experiencing the consequences every day. At present, the National Solid Waste Management Authority is responsible for both regulating the waste management system and carrying out day-to-day garbage collection. In practice, this dual role has stretched the authority beyond its capacity,” said Swaby.

The mayor was addressing councillors at the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation monthly meeting on Tuesday, where he warned that the country’s current waste management arrangement is failing both operationally and from a public health standpoint.

“It does not have sufficient trucks, staff, or operational flexibility to meet the country’s waste management needs. Too much time and energy are consumed by efforts to keep trucks on the road and to manage staff shortages, rather than ensuring the system as a whole functions efficiently and reliably,” said Swaby.

He proposed that the root of the problem lies in the dual duty undertaken by the NSWMA to handle the regulation of the waste management sector while carrying out daily garbage collection, which he says are roles that were never stipulated for the agency initially.

“The National Solid Waste Management Authority Act of 2001 clearly envisions the authority primarily as a regulator, not as the main operator. The Act assigns the NSWMA’s responsibility for formulating standards, guidelines, and codes of practice for solid waste management, as well as monitoring and enforcing compliance. This is a regulator function focused on oversight, accountability, enforcement, not routine service delivery,” argued Swaby.

The mayor’s comments come as the NSWMA is facing one of its biggest challenges since the agency’s inception in 2002, now taking on the third role of national debris management, which has been slated as top priority.

After Hurricane Melissa made landfall on October 28,2025, its catastrophic winds left Western Jamaica covered in 4.8 million metric tonnes of debris — a task which the agency’s Executive Director Audley Gordon has been transparent in representing as tedious.

In a press briefing on Monday, he told journalists that the NSWMA managed to clear 27,000 of the 450,000 truckloads of debris left by the hurricane. While he acknowledged that the volume of waste cleared so far was small, he appealed to Jamaicans for patience as he vowed that his teams were working “night and day”.

Additionally, he said a newly formed temporary Debris Management Unit would be in talks with private contractors to source additional heavy machinery, to further fast-track efforts to move debris.

With this added responsibility, domestic garbage collection has also seen multiple setbacks with Gordon stating in an interview on November 10, that the agency was clearing several areas affected by tardy garbage collection in the period before Melissa’s rampage and had anticipated that it would have been under control in the following weeks. But the problem was worsened by the Category 5 storm’s assault.

At the time, he said that garbage collection was delayed for up to 12 working days.

Under Swaby’s proposal, responsibility for garbage collection would be decentralised and placed with local authorities, empowering them to contract private operators to provide service, while the NSWMA would then return to its core regulatory role.

“This model allows each part of the system to focus on what it does best, and ultimately to deliver a better outcome for the public. Under this approach, private operators would concentrate on collection and logistics. Local authorities who best understand their communities, service patterns, and local challenges would manage contracts and respond directly to public concern,” reasoned Swaby.

To facilitate the transition, Swaby recommended that the change be first practised in Kingston and St Andrew, which would allow the Government to test the decentralisation model, and address operational challenges before considering a national roll-out.

“What is being proposed is not the removal of public oversight, but the strengthening of it. A regulator that regulates, operator that operates, and local authorities that are empowered to act. This is how we move from chronic failure and towards a waste management system that is reliable, efficient, and worthy of public trust,” he said.