EDITORIAL - Time for a modern landfill

This past week, residents in the Greater Kingston region confronted one of their too-frequent concerns: fire at the Riverton City landfill that caused acrid smoke to hang low over the city.

There were the usual concerns over the carcinogens that might have been unleashed into the atmosphere; laments about the expected rise in respiratory ailments; and a scramble for ways to douse the blaze. None of this, of course, amounts to a permanent fix to the problem which, a dozen years ago, Jamaicans were promised was on the way.

At the time, as is again the case, the People's National Party formed the Government; Arnold Bertram was then minister with responsibility for solid-waste management.

Mr Bertram pulled several regional agencies together as the National Solid Waste Management Authority and announced that going forward, Jamaica would have a modern system for the management of garbage. The project was to have been underpinned by a loan of US$35 million (J$3 billion at the current exchange rate) from the World Bank to help establish the new system.

Mr Bertram's plan envisioned modern, properly managed landfills and, over time, household separation of garbage and a robust process of recycling. As is too often the case in Jamaica, good ideas remain just that - good ideas. We fall short on implementation.

Arscott Can Define Legacy

We will accept, as will be argued, that part of the problem for the failure to seriously modernise Jamaica's solid-waste management system has been an insufficiency of money.

But the larger part of the problem, we feel, is the failure to take a grip of the issue and to throw off the corruption and cronyism that are often attendant in these arrangements. There is not the kind of rolled-up-cuffs management that insists on value for money; so the available cash doesn't go nearly as far as it can.

Frankly, we do not hold out much hope that it will happen, but we will be among the first celebrating Noel Arscott, the current minister, if he gets going a system close to what Mr Bertram had in mind.

If this is to happen, he has to eschew pettifogging political relationships, turn his face hard against corruption, and insist on efficiency.

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