Barbados Today

Garbage in abundance.

This was what “adorned” many streets and the front of homes in the Upper Christ Church and St. Philip today.

When the Barbados TODAY team visited areas such as Kendal Hill, Silver Hill, Canevale, Warners Park, Enterprise, Maxwell Hill and Chancery Lane in Christ Church as well as Marchfield, Well House, Six Roads, Long Bay, Bayleys and Four Square in St. Philip it was quite evident by the sight of the mountains of rubbish and, on a few occasions rodents “making meals” out of the garbage that regular collections by the Sanitation Service Authority were lacking.

In spite of this, however, many of the people this newspaper spoke with concerning this matter did not seem worried about the non-collection.

A resident of Canevale, who did not want to be identified, blamed the heaps of garbage located a few feet away from her home on the number of holidays which occurred last week. She said people in the area usually had no problem with collections as they were done on Mondays, Thursdays and sometimes on Saturdays.

“Dads” from Kendal Hill also agreed.

“They come on Thursday and Mondays so we don’t have no problems. Maybe the people in Silver Hill does have a problem, but not we. The truck may be delayed — if it don’t come today it will come tomorrow,” he said.

“If we don’t see any by the end of the week and the garbage start to get bigger it is then we would be concerned.”

Over the past few months there have been complaints about irregular SSA collections in many districts across the island. Sources said while the authority required about 35 trucks to be in service daily to properly serve the country, some days it only mustered about a dozen.

Government has imported 10 new trucks for the SSA but these are still to be deployed.

When Barbados TODAY contacted Acting General Manager of the SSA, Janice Jones, she said: “We are having some challenges with our vehicles.”

She then directed all questions to Public Relations Officer, Carl Padmore, who said management was aware of the situation and would make “the appropriate statement shortly”. (KC)