SSA clears massive loads of garbage hoarded at 1st Avenue Grazettes

Residents of 1st Avenue Grazettes, St Michael are relieved after health authorities intervened this morning and removed some 12 truck loads of garbage being hoarded by a resident of the area.

Public Relations Officer of the Sanitation Service Authority (SS) Carl Alff Padmore told reporters at the scene that the man’s cousin had reached out to them for help after the situation had become unbearable. Relatives and neighbours believe the middle-aged man from the district is in dire need of long-term psychiatric care.

“What we have is a case where a gentleman for over two years had been accumulating waste. The waste had been a nuisance to the residents. His cousin had made an appeal for assistance and therefore we thought that to come in here by ourselves, would be risky. So we have the police here with us and we have the Ministry of Health,” Padmore said.

He noted that in just under an hour the SSA workers had cleared four truck loads of garbage.

“We anticipate that we are going to be here for a better part of today,” the SSA PRO declared.

While he said the amount of work required in cleaning up the mounds of waste would pull on the authority’s resources, he is hoping the man would cooperate with his family and get the help he needs.

Minister of Health and Wellness Ian Gooding-Edghill, who was on location as well, said the situation had become untenable.

“We anticipate they are going to move maybe about 20 loads of debris from this area which is highly unacceptable. The authorities are obviously going to deal with the individual and see how best we can rectify this situation,” Gooding-Edghill told reporters.

“You would appreciate that this is an untenable situation. I know that the residents, even though I have had an opportunity to discuss the matter with them, obviously are grateful for another intervention and another act of relief. I want to thank them and assure them that we will continue to make sure that this constituency and this particular area here remains free of debris,” the Minister of Health promised.

He believes that this morning’s effort by the SSA workers would go a long way in keeping the area free of rodents and debris, which he contended is “absolutely critical to our environmental health”.

The man’s cousin, Marlon Skinner of 1st Avenue Grazettes Main Road who was also at the scene of the clean-up, made an impassioned plea to the government to remove him from the streets and give him the psychiatric and social care he requires.

“I am appealing to the government or the ministry to help my cousin cause he sick. He can’t handle the streets. Right now, the streets are too tough for him. Out here now is like a different world for him. He does need help because all day long his mind is just on the garbage,” Skinner declared.

Stating that his cousin’s behaviour was not always this bad, he explained that his condition got worse over the past three to four years.

According to Skinner his relative was an outpatient of the Psychiatric Hospital, but complained of being dissatisfied with the results of his treatment.

“I don’t know what sort of methods they working at the mental place. They letting he out all the time and doing the same thing over and over and over. So I am appealing to anybody that is listening to me to help.”

Skinner said nobody could be happy with the garbage being dumped because it has been attracting mosquitos and rats.

“It’s alright to say clean up now and he is still on the streets and he back doing the same thing over again. He needs taking up and helping,” Skinner added.

“He mind gone, and he does need help. He got other family who does talk wid he and it still ain’t happening; and we don’t have the power to help he. We don’t got the resources to help he,” said the man’s cousin.
emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb