NSWMA to provide garbage drums to households

Efforts by the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) to increase the containerisation of garbage by Jamaican householders have received a major boost.

This as the authority has formalised a partnership that will see Hardware and Lumber Limited (H&L) providing the government entity with 2,400 drums, valued at over $1.5 million, annually.

The partnership has been dubbed the 'Drum a Di Gate' initiative and the agreement was officially formalised at a signing ceremony at the NSWMA's St Andrew headquarters today. 

Managing director of Hardware and Lumber, Marcus Richards, argued that there needs to be a rethinking of waste management in Jamaica as there is still a perception among some citizens that waste disposal is someone else's responsibility. 

“This problem persists equally in working-class communities as it does in neighbourhoods with multimillion-dollar homes and in business districts,” he said. 

The initiative was launched last year November in Mandeville, Manchester.

Executive director of the NSWMA, Audley Gordon, said the aim is to distribute the drums in dense communities.

Gordon said the agency has not been receiving the level of proper garbage containerisation that it would like but is working to get improvements.

“When the garbage is not properly containerised and is scattered all over, where we would spend three minutes or two minutes at a gate, sometimes we spend 15 or 20 minutes to do the clean-up, the rake up and the bag up,” he said. 

He said the initiative will help to make garbage collection more efficient.

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