Garbage piles up again ‘amid overtime bar’

Two bank holidays in a week have left residents across a number of St Michael communities having to put up with rising mounds of refuse.

But Sanitation Service Authority spokesman Carl Alff Padmore attributes the unsightly pile-up on SSA workers not being granted overtime among other issues.

“We had four bank holidays falling very close and we are not paying overtime to our workers. We do sincerely apologize for the backlog, but we are working around the clock to address the situation in and around Barbados,” he said.

When a Barbados TODAY team visited a number of communities across the parish, the stench of neighbourhood trash heaps rose with the afternoon heat.

But Padmore reasoned that some of the foul odour was because Barbadians fail to sort their garbage at source.

“We still are having that problem where Barbadians feel that they should throw every and anything out in the garbage receptacle. If they get into the operation at home they would be less garbage going into the landfill and it is more environmentally friendly.”

At Westbury Road, there was a pile of debris just outside the St Leonard’s Anglican Church.

Sharon Bowen, the owner of a nearby babysitting service, said the SSA did attempt to remove the debris but the truck was full.

Bowen declared the garbage pile was caused by people from other communities in and around the St Michael area illegally dumping their waste in Westbury Road.

A Barbados TODAY team witnessed an SSA truck picking up garbage along the Westbury Road stretch.

At Bridge Gap, Eagle Hall, residents seemed to disregard the ‘No Dumping’ sign as a heap of garbage was piled directly in front.

Outside the Ann Gill Memorial Methodist Church in Fairfield, there was another garbage pile which included household items.

At Denton Road, Grazettes, a homeowner told Barbados TODAY: “As you can see this is a problem. The garbage ain’t get pick up and we are fed up.”

A resident of Lattice Road, Grazettes, St Michael said: “[They] come and move garbage from Grazettes Resource Centre and the truck [became] full and I was told that is why they did not pick up out here.”

SSA spokesman Padmore told Barbados TODAY that sanitation workers were heading to several St Michael districts tonight so that by tomorrow the areas should be restored to a state of normalcy.