FALMOUTH, Trelawny — In a desperate bid to curb increasing incidents of illegal disposal of garbage in sections of Trelawny, mayor of Falmouth, C Junior Gager is appealing to the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) to assemble a dedicated team to apprehend offenders and take decisive punitive action.

“This will have to be a special assignment where somebody is caught and charged for disposing of garbage any and everywhere,” Gager urged as he spoke of the need for vigilance by NSWMA.

He was speaking during last Thursday’s monthly meeting of the Trelawny Municipal Corporation (TMC).

“I’m begging you, Solid Waste, put a team together,” said Gager.

He expressed the municipal corporation’s willingness to provide assistance needed to identify and apprehend anyone involved in illegal dumping in order to “take them to court and make them pay a fine”.

According to Gager, with Falmouth coming into its own as a tourist destination and the continued economic development of Trelawny, it is vital that the parish is kept “clean as a whistle”.

He was particularly vocal about garbage being thrown on the road near the main entrance to a hotel. The mayor said he had received complaints and photos from the hotelier.

“People need to have some pride and dignity. You can’t just go out, drive out by a hotel entrance and just dump your garbage! They are employing hundreds of persons…young people from this community and adjoining parishes too,” said a visibly upset Gager, who is also chairman of the TMC.

“You need to just wait until the [garbage] truck comes or make the proper arrangement. You can’t just drive out there and throw out your boxes,” he insisted.

Gager also expressed his disgust at the behaviour of individuals who are dumping garbage on a Port Authority of Jamaica (PAJ) road which facilitates ingress and egress in the rapidly developing town, helping to ease congestion. Motorists are now denied access to the road as the PAJ has recently been forced to make the difficult decision to close it.

Gager revealed that since last October’s passage of Hurricane Melissa, the TMC, working with the NSWMA, carried out three major clean-up up operations and removed garbage — including dead pets — on that stretch of road.

“One day I noticed someone had two dead dogs that were on their premises, took them out and dumped them by the roadside. These dogs had tags and collars, so they were [living] in somebody’s home,” he argued.

“We want more pride and dignity. When things go wrong, the first person you blame, or the organisation that you blame, is the municipal corporation and the Solid Waste. Solid Waste can only collect the garbage in a timely and a decent way. You cant go about scattering [garbage] or creating dumps,” Gager added.

He said the indiscriminate disposal of waste is also hampering the TMC’s ongoing drive to “clean all the drains”.

“As we clean…the bottles, the diapers, the garbage from everywhere is just dumped into these places. Let us use the dumpsters that are available. Let us use the sites that are available for garbage to be collected,” the mayor urged.

Garbage strewn on the road near a hotel’s entrance in Trelawny.

Solid waste disposed of on a thoroughfare near a hotel entrance in Trelawny.