By Emmanuel Joseph
Intervention by the state-run Transport Authority on Tuesday led to the clean-up of what director Ruth Holder described as disgusting and filthy conditions at the Cheapside van stand in The City.
Cleaners were quickly dispatched by the Ministry of Transport, Works and Water Resources at the behest of Holder who visited the terminal and informed ministry officials of the need to take immediate remedial action.
“The situation is awful, it’s disgusting, it is filthy…. It is all types of garbage…bottles, fruits, cans, broken bottles, food containers, and cardboard boxes. It’s just disgusting. I cannot pad what I am saying to you, I cannot say it is not as bad as it looks, because it really is bad…and I have to have a conscience and I have to be able to live with who I am as an individual, and I cannot say anything else than it is bad, it’s not a good sight,” Holder said when she went to see the conditions of the terminal after Barbados TODAY reported to her that minibus and ZR operators complained of rat sightings and having to work amid garbage.
She was particularly disappointed given that workers were specifically assigned by the ministry to keep the van stand tidy.
Director of the Transport Authority Ruth Holder.
“It is really unfortunate, the condition of down here. This is not fresh garbage, this is stale garbage, which tells me that it would have been like this for a little while. It is sad that I know there are people who are deployed to work down here to clean down here on a daily basis. Clearly, we have had some issues somewhere along the line,” Holder said.
“I would like to apologise to the public who use this terminal, to the operators who use the terminal, and anybody else involved who would be affected or feel aggrieved by the situation, and they have a right to feel aggrieved by the way it looks. It is not the healthiest situation. I understand there are all sorts of vermin and all sorts of things. I am seeing garbage down here of all sorts of magnitudes, which ought not to be in a terminal.”
The Transport Authority chief pointed to clumps of hair, for example, which she said suggested that garbage was being dumped there from elsewhere.
“In addition to not having the staff down here or the staff not being here to clean as they ought to clean, we also have the issue of those who pass by us who drop their garbage in here…unsolicited garbage…who ought not to put their garbage in here. Again, it is sad. As a Ministry of Transport and Works, for us to have a situation like this down here, it is not right,” she contended.
Several commuters who were sitting in vans awaiting their departure agreed with Holder that the conditions were “disgraceful.”
“And ‘bout here does have tourists coming down here. It just looks disgraceful. It needs cleaning,” a female passenger who did not want to be identified stated.
“It looks disgraceful. It doesn’t say much for Barbados as a tourism destination. Tourists from the west coast does be down here regularly, and we should be ashamed to got down here looking so,” another female commuter complained.
ZR driver Andrea Gittens confirmed that garbage was strewn around the terminal for more than a week.
“We used to see a man come and clean and then a woman, but I [haven’t] seen anybody lately,” he informed Barbados TODAY.
Some of the garbage strewn on the ground at the Cheapside van stand.
Another ZR driver who operated from Cheapside for more than two decades but currently sells drinks inside the facility reported that since the female cleaner stopped coming, “you really don’t have anybody down here cleaning”.
Another driver suggested that more cans be placed in the terminal to encourage people to dispose of their refuse properly.
Holder said she wanted to see the staff who were assigned to clean the terminal show up for work and carry out their duties.
“I don’t know who they are, I am not responsible for them, but clearly, it tells me that somebody is not showing up for work, or showing up for work and not doing what they are supposed to do. Overall, I know that the ministry has plans in terms of improving what we have down here. But again, everything takes money. Does the Government have money, is it one of those projects that you can afford to work on now, do you want to start a project and it is a half-hearted project, or do you want to do a complete project? I can’t speak to that, but I know there are plans in train somewhere along the line,” she told Barbados TODAY.
Earlier, Complaints Officer with the Alliance Owners of Public Transport (AOPT) Craig Banfield said he had been getting an increasing number of complaints from PSV operators regarding the conditions under which they had to work.
“Normally, the van stand would be cleaned once a week. Somebody would not have cleaned it in a very long time because the garbage has piled up. I mean, you have tourists that coming in the stand. What are they going to say?” he told Barbados TODAY in an interview.
He said the AOPT would be seeking to discuss the situation with the ministry.
emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb
