MINISTER of Local Government and Regional Development, Mr. Ganga Persaud told a press conference, on Monday, that, over the past two weeks, his ministry has sought to engage key stakeholders in consultations and discussions on the current solid waste management programme.
Speaking at the ministry, in Kingston, Georgetown, he said visits were also made to various prospective landfill sites across the country.
Persaud said persons involved in this round of discourse, at the level of Regional Administrations, were the Regional and Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDC) officials, contractors and others.
According to the minister, those taken on the site visits were solid waste management contractors who expressed interest in the initial stages of the programme and who, after several rounds of talks at the ministry level, maintained it.
He said that, after the site visitations, the contractors were given ten days to submit their modified proposals, following which an assessment will be done and those submissions will be ranked and then an offer will be made to the contractor with the highest ranking.
Persaud said the ministry hopes to reach the stage of making offers no later than October 15 and he explained that “the process is simply to allow the contractors to operate landfill sites across these regions and for those sites to be established, operated and managed, based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s guidelines.”
He added that these guidelines were shared with a total of 13 contractors who made known that they are interested in the landfill sites countrywide, with varying numbers for each Region.