WESTERN BUREAU:The National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) says it is urgently in need of additional workers and trucks to handle the backlog of garbage piling up in Hanover.Speaking at last Thursday’s monthly meeting of the Hanover Municipal Corporation, Mark Jones, the public cleansing manager at Western Parks and Market (WPM), said there is a dire need for drivers and sanitation officers, which is impacting the ability to address the growing garbage backlog.In a bid to attract sanitation workers, Jones said there are now improved terms of employment within the WPM, and he used the opportunity to urge councillors to spread the word that there are vacancies within the organisation, which they desperately want to fill. “We really need persons who are not older than, say, 40 to 45 years old. The work is pensionable, and we really are in dire need of those persons,” he said.Jones also blamed the traffic conditions across Hanover, which he says is affecting the number of trips that the trucks transporting garbage can make per day, noting that sometimes planned trips have had to be aborted because the traffic situation does not allow it.“Just as a matter of information, we have some units that we are rehabilitating right now, and Hanover is going to be the number one area [that] the first rehabilitated units will be coming to,” said Jones.However, with the garbage backlog affecting approximately 22 districts, Lucea Deputy Mayor Andria Dehaney-Grant was clearly not amused by the prospect of having to wait on the rehabilitated units to have the garbage removed from the affected communities. “Every month I say this, we deserve some better trucks (garbage compactors) here in Hanover, apart from everything, almost every day we hear that the NSWMA truck is not working; it breaks down regularly. We need some new trucks in this parish. We deserve that, as we pay our taxes well in this parish. We are always in the top three with regard to tax payment,” she said“The rehabilitated trucks will break down in a matter of days because of the amount of backlog there is in this parish. The parish is in a state that we have never seen it in before,” she added.According to Dehaney-Grant, the widespread rodent infestation across the parish is creating a problem for the Hanover Health Department, which is currently overwhelmed in its bid to arrest the situation. She urged Jones to pass on the message to his superiors that Hanover needs new garbage trucks.Communities such as Riverside, Askenish, Mount Piece, Clifton, Chester Castle, and several districts in Green Island were highlighted by the various councillors as areas that are crying out for attention.Marvel Sewell, councillor for the Green Island Division, said there are at least 15 truckloads of garbage in that division waiting to be collected, and questioned how feasible it is to expect the WPM to address all seven parish council divisions in the parish.As a stopgap measure, Sewell is suggesting that the WPM seek to establish a holding dump area in the parish, which would allow them to have all the garbage stored at one location instead of all over the parish, a factor that has caused some residents to  resort to burning their uncollected garbage.Bryan Miller