NSWMA wants greater public partnership in waste management

 

Executive Director of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), Audley Gordon, has said the agency continues to grapple with unsustainable practices in the disposal of solid waste.

 

Mr. Gordon said the agency lacks the necessary regulations to enforce the NSWMA Act 2001.

 

Despite public awareness campaigns, he shared, the agency is still dealing with a lack of buy-in from residents.

 

"We have seen where the partnership that we have courted all these years with the residents, while there is about a 40% of the people who have signed up for that partnership to make waste management succeed, a higher percentage have not yet signed up," he noted.

 

"No agency on their own - change executive director all you want, fire everybody up there and put in a new team in the current context, they will still have problems. Why? The only country that I know where people will carry a drinks crate of garbage and just dump it on the roadway for somebody to come...to take it up is Jamaica. And that has to change," pleaded NSWMA boss. 

 

He again called for greater public partnership in the management of waste.