Crews from the Sanitation Service Authority (SSA) have been refusing to collect garbage at 1st Avenue, Alleyne’s Land, Bush Hall, St Michael and are blaming a mechanic whose operations, they claim, are blocking their passage.
In the meantime, residents are complaining that garbage has been piling up and rodent sightings are becoming more frequent as they have not had a single collection since the passage of Hurricane Elsa nearly three weeks ago.
“Since the storm, we haven’t had a collection…. We are getting a lot more flies, sometimes we see the rodents actually running around and stuff, so we need the garbage collected as soon as possible,” Rea Hinds told Barbados TODAY.
Gizelle Quimby, who owns the nearby Quimby’s Bar and Grocery, disclosed that she has been having to pay private haulers since she accumulates more garbage than the average resident.
“I have to keep that clean, so it is really affecting my business. You usually see [the rodents] running across the road and stuff like that,” she said.
Public Relations Officer of the SSA, Alf Padmore confirmed that the trash has not been collected for over two weeks, but he explained that for over three months the garbage collection agency has been pleading with a mechanic on 1st Avenue to move a number of vehicles out of the way.
He said that as a result of the parked vehicles, SSA trucks have been damaged and have caused damage to properties at the side of the road.
“He has vehicles parked on both sides of the road and our vehicle can’t get through. We approached him twice using moral suasion, on the third occasion, we took the police there from District ‘A’, the police cautioned him and he has just bluntly refused to move these vehicles,” Padmore told Barbados TODAY.
“We are at our wits’ end. We really want to serve the community in the best possible way, but on two occasions when we went through, we scraped the wall of the lady and we can’t keep doing that because it damages our vehicles and damages the wall. So, we prefer at this stage to allow the authorities to do what they have to do. We really sympathize with the residents but there is nothing else that we can do at this time,” he added.
The SSA spokesperson revealed that the situation in Bush Hall is not an isolated one.
“We have had cases where we tried to ride the sidewalk in certain areas and damaged somebody’s pipe, rode the sidewalk somewhere else and damaged somebody’s fence. We can’t continue to do that,” said Padmore.
“And it’s not only him. There are a number of areas in Barbados where there are persons who have these types of workshops and they have the vehicles parked on both sides and it’s really causing a problem. We want you to continue to do your work, but be mindful that there are service vehicles that need to come through as well,” he added.
When Barbados TODAY visited the mechanic shop owned by Frank Alleyne he blamed the owners of a house adjacent to his business, who erected a fence which he believes is too close to the road.
Nevertheless, he acknowledged that there were two vehicles he was trying to have removed on the weekend.
“I would like to get the wall moved because the wall is right in the road. That is right on the sidewalk. That is the problem, not the vehicles through here because there are vehicles up the road too and the truck comes down pretty good, no problem,” Alleyne told Barbados TODAY.
“If the wall wasn’t there the truck would pass, so the problem isn’t here, the problem is there,” he insisted.
(kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb)
