CITY Hall has spent another year grappling with financial woes and struggling to get a handle on solid waste management; thus, in 2017, the municipality will be looking to roll out a number of initiatives that are geared at hitting both proverbial birds with one stone.

Director of Solid Waste Management services, Walter Narine, in an early Thursday morning press briefing, disclosed that 2017 is going to be all about promoting reuse and recycle initiatives: converting organic waste to organic fertilizer; charging commercial businesses for refuse collection; licensing garbage collectors; charging septic tank and garbage disposal trucks a fee for traversing the roadways, and marketing proper waste separation in schools.

Narine has said it is not so much about the money as it is about proper solid waste management. “If you look at the generation of waste in Georgetown, out of the 220 tonnes of waste generated daily in Georgetown, 50 per cent of that is organic waste; and that is money (being thrown) away daily at the landfill. Our farmers will definitely benefit, it will be environmentally-friendly and it will save the impact to the landfills,” Narine said.

He disclosed that a sum of approximately $25M has already been approved in the municipality’s 2017 budget for the compost initiative,
which, once operational, is expected to generate $30M in organic fertilizer, with each cycle running six weeks.

Funding has also been set aside in the budget to procure 10,000 receptacles to be disseminated to primary schools all across Georgetown. “We’re going to market the separation of waste at the primary school level. Teach the kids how to separate the waste with the necessary containers which we will be providing free to them, and we will teach them to do composting at the schools. If we teach the kids at the school level to reduce, reuse and recycle, they will take it back home and teach their siblings,” Narine explained.

He noted that in a recent assessment exercise, it was discovered that of some 302 businesses and vendors operating in the Stabroek Market area, only four had complied with a request for them to obtain garbage receptacles of a particular specification recommended by the City’s by-laws.

NO LONGER AFFORD
Narine has said that the City can no longer afford the burden of taking care of the commercial waste free of charge. Come 2017, commercial businesses will have the option of either paying City Hall a fee to have their refuse collected, or paying private collectors to do so.

“We cannot continue to carry the weight of collecting waste from commercial businesses anymore. We (do) collection in the commercial areas two times per day, and that is not sufficient for the waste they generate. I have a street orderly of 35 staff that traverse Regent Street, Robb Street, but that, too, is still not enough. It’s not until I take my two trucks out there that we see any relief,” Narine said.

He also disclosed that garbage collectors will now need to be licensed to operate around Georgetown, while sewage-collecting businesses will be charged for traversing the Georgetown streets, as well as being mandated to properly treat solid waste before dumping it.

Narine said some sewage companies have reportedly been dumping untreated waste in the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Kingston seawalls, and some travel from as far as Linden to so do. This practice, he said, has to stop. “Imagine, they are collecting revenue to empty your septic tank, and they are disposing of it in the Atlantic Ocean (after) driving through the streets of Georgetown. Everybody has to endure that smell, the City gets nothing, the country as a whole gets nothing, and they dumping it out there in the Atlantic Ocean. (This situation) has to change!”

GIVING BACK
Deputy Town Clerk Sharon Harry-Munroe said City Hall will be giving back to citizens by collecting their bulky waste throughout December free of charge, as persons go about their Christmas cleaning. This means that all those old stoves, old fridges, old carpets and tree trimmings will be picked up by the municipality’s collection system from this Monday.
And that aside, the amnesty period on the payment of rates and taxes has been extended to December 16.