Editorial | NSWMA’s communication problem

Jamaica’s National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), everyone knows, has a communication problem – especially when it speaks to its poor clients in inner-city communities.

Usually, the posture of its officials is defensive, and their tone stentorian and hectoring, rather than measured and persuasive.

That image, unfortunately, was unlikely to have been erased or dispelled, based on the reports of a recent visit to the Cassava Piece, St Andrew community by the NSWMA’s director of operations, Aretha McFarlane, to promote what, on its face, seems to be a good programme. Ms McFarlane butted heads with residents over the (in)frequency with which the NSWMA’s garbage trucks visited Cassava Piece, forcing people, residents say, to discard refuse in the gully that runs through the community.

“Some persons are trying to pass blame, of course,” Ms McFarlane said. “... But we know our schedule and what we have been doing since we have gotten our environmental wardens in the community. The truck has been coming.”

The good thing is that, tensions abated, Ms McFarlane conceded that there would be need for further engagement with the community and public education initiatives around the question of the illegal dumping of garbage.

THAT TONE

But, again, there was that tone: “Let us teach them and see how best they accept and implement.”

This newspaper wishes the NSWMA good luck. We, however, suggest that, before its officials return to Cassava Piece, or any other place where it feels there is a community failure to properly manage its garbage, the authority should hire a communications specialist to prep them on how to engage people for the best results.

Public shaming (like referring to people as ‘nasty’, like the agency’s boss has been known to do) and condescending superciliousness just won’t cut it.

In the meantime, the NSWMA should provide further and better particulars on the Cassava Piece initiative, which Ms McFarlane said was launched “about a year ago” and which the authority intends to replicate “right across Jamaica”.

An important question is whether this is the same scheme that the former finance minister, Dr Nigel Clarke, announced for Cassava Piece in his budget presentation for the 2020/21 fiscal year, with an allied programme for May Pen, Clarendon. The Gleaner had endorsed those initiatives on our long-held and often-repeated conviction that doing small things consistently – such as collecting garbage, cleaning drains and trimming verges and getting them right – can be as transformational for Jamaica as any mega project.

Like many of Jamaica’s informally settled and inner-city communities, Cassava Piece is adjacent to a paved gully that flows for several miles from the east, westward, to the sea.

NARROW ALLEYS

It has narrow alleys and lanes through which motor vehicles, especially large ones like garbage trucks, find it difficult to travel. That gully, along its length, is often filled with garbage, in part, the residents claim, because inadequate solid waste services force them to discard their rubbish in the waterway. In some parts of the gully, a build-up of silt caused the development of islands on which large trees grew.

Having announced a J$320 million gully cleaning programme for Kingston in 2020, Minister Clarke announced a scheme for Cassava Piece to help keep that community, and its waterway, clean.

He said: “This programme will help people to take charge of their community. It will focus on settlements along the banks of gullies, most of which are difficult, if not impossible, for garbage trucks to traverse. The NSWMA will recruit people from these communities, train them as environmental wardens, and task them to supervise the solid waste management in their area.”

The wardens’ job would include pulling “carts through the community and collecting the garbage from those hard-to-reach areas” for depositing to a central collection area. That was five years ago.

This scheme has the same components as the one the NSWMA’s Ms McFarlane was recently promoting in Cassava Piece, which she said started in 2024.

The NSWMA should clarify when the project announced by Dr Clarke was carried out in Cassava Piece and May Pen, or if it was started and halted, and, if so, why?

Doing small things consistently and getting them right is more likely to achieve community buy-in than stentorian hectoring. That’s the demonstration effect.