MONTEGO BAY, St James — While some residents of Estuary and Granville in St James say the 12 new garbage trucks the parish has received have made a difference, Councillor Kerry Thomas (People’s National Party, Mount Salem Division) says he is still fielding complaints from people within his division. The mixed reviews are in stark contrast to Western Parks and Markets (WPM) Acting Regional Operations Manager Dramaine Jones’ assessment of his team’s performance over the last two weeks.

Jones says the backlog has been cleared in the National Solid Waste Management Authority’s (NSWMA) western region, which is covered by WPM. This includes the parishes of St James, Hanover, Westmoreland and Trelawny

“What you see coming out right now is basically garbage that is less than a week old right across the region. The backlog was coming from just over 100 loads — I’m talking the four parishes — and, as of last week, Westmoreland and Hanover had no backlog, neither St James nor Trelawny,” Jones pointed out.

“With Operation Sweep — which ran the previous weekend, not this weekend — we cleared all the backlog within Westmoreland and, with that assistance, it means we could provide more focus and more resources to the other parishes,” he added.

However, despite his assurance, Councillor Thomas insisted that the issue is not totally resolved.

“I must acknowledge that I’ve seen the trucks around but I’m still getting complaints from various sections of my division regarding garbage collection,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

He stressed that he did not expect an overnight fix but he believes three weeks was enough time for WMP to get things right.

“I hope they pick it up. As you see, we are going into the Christmas season and more garbage is going to come out. More and more cuttings along the road because everybody bushing so I would expect that they would get very efficient this week going into next week so we can have a clean Christmas,” urged Thomas.

Jones acknowledged that they expect heavier volumes of waste being generated over the holidays.

“One of the issues we are foreseeing is that a number of places are producing a lot more garbage than normal — which is why the [NSWMA] Executive Director [Audley Gordon] has been pushing for more composting and recycling and so on because it reduces the amount of waste going to the disposal site or we have to collect,” he said.

For now, a resident of Estuary in St James who identified herself as Nesia is among those hoping her neighbourhood will be garbage-free over the holidays. She was ecstatic that last week, for the first time in a while, garbage was collected — and she is keeping a watchful eye to see if the trucks will come back this week and eventually establish a regular schedule.

“For a while we never had the truck a come in,” she said. “People complain that dog turn over the garbage and there are rats and roaches, and so we would like to see the truck more regular in the place,” she said.

A resident from Granville, who declined to provide his name, is equally eager to see a regular schedule maintained.

“I saw the trucks last week Wednesday but I am hoping that they they’ll be back before Christmas,” he said.

The one dozen trucks delivered to St James were among 50 imported by the Government to add to its existing fleet. There is still a shortfall, however as the original plan — before COVID-19 forced the Government to spend resources elsewhere — was to order 100 trucks.