MONTEGO BAY, St James — Announcing that the State’s National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) will benefit from 50 new garbage trucks by the end of year, executive director Audley Gordon said his team is determined to provide better service to residents.

Gordon, who was speaking at the Western Parks and Market Waste Management Limited’s (WPM) World Oceans’ Day event in Montego Bay on Wednesday, stated that the authority has “cleared the procurement hurdle”.

“Even though it is World Oceans’ Day, I know that I can’t come to Montego Bay or anywhere in the west and people don’t ask me about the trucks and the garbage they want to get removed from their gates. I have very good news, the trucks are coming. We have just cleared the procurement hurdle and we are now in the phase where we are preparing to place the order,” Gordon said during his address.

The solid waste boss continued, “Why this is important is because government procurement is a process that is tedious…even though it is Government buying the trucks to do government work, you still have to go through this very tedious procurement process that held us for about two months. We have cleared that now and we are in the phase of ordering the trucks.”

Though the timeline provided for these trucks to be acquired are some months away and residents are already complaining about the inadequate service being provided by the solid waste teams across the island, Gordon maintained that “better days are coming”.

“I will caution you though that the trucks are not shelf items, you don’t just got into a shop and buy the trucks, they have to be manufactured. Manufacturing could take three to four months then they have to be shipped to Jamaica and we are talking about another six weeks. So if you pray hard and everything goes according to plan, we can have the trucks by the end of November,” said the executive director.

He added, “At that time I will be in a far better position to treat with some of the problems that you are currently having. I acknowledge that you are having problems, we don’t want to see garbage at your gate, we want to come for the garbage. It is not for shortage of personnel, we have the sanitation workers [and] they are working assiduously with what they have, but they are pretty much running on fumes now.”

Acknowledging the many cries of the people living in western Jamaica, Gordon noted that WPM is set to receive at least 10 of these new trucks to better serve the four parishes. As of now, Gordon told Jamaica Observer after Wednesday’s ceremony, the regional arm of the solid waste authority is operating with 13 Government-owned trucks and a tipper truck.

This is grossly inadequate to effectively serve the region as their usual fleet contains 20 trucks, the executive director stated.

“Thirteen trucks being up sounds good to a man who doesn’t know our business, but we have almost half of our trucks down right now. This truck game is delicate because they are mechanical and they are not necessarily new trucks, so there is an unpredictable nature with these trucks,” Gordon told the Observer.

He added, “I can be speaking to you about having 13 trucks up and I just get a phone call to say two of those trucks are down, so we are now at 11 trucks. It is very difficult as the trucks get older.”

In the meantime, Gordon appealed to residents of western Jamaica to continue to exercise patience while the waste management limited tries to keep afloat their garbage collection.

“The first thing I would say to them is try your best to containerise your garbage while you wait on the truck. We are pushing hard with what we have. The operations director was just talking to me about us planning some special operations for Westmoreland because we are doing very badly over there now,” he said.

“The residents have been very patient and I must use this medium to thank them for their understanding in this difficult period. It is a difficult period for us and for them. They deserve a better service, there is no going around it and that is why we are hasting as best as we can to get the 50 trucks on the road,” Gordon stated.