SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Ch­agua­nas May­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar is dis­sat­is­fied with the garbage col­lec­tion sys­tem in the bor­ough. As a re­sult Nages­sar has threat­ened to get rid of the bor­ough's Health De­part­ment staff. He made the state­ment af­ter the re­cent month­ly statu­to­ry meet­ing of the cor­po­ra­tion. Nages­sar said the coun­cil has re­ceived nu­mer­ous com­plaints that garbage col­lec­tion is ir­reg­u­lar and un­sat­is­fac­to­ry. He said the Health De­part­ment is sup­posed to mon­i­tor col­lec­tion and make rec­om­men­da­tions.

How­ev­er, he said the work was not get­ting done to the sat­is­fac­tion of burgess­es. Nages­sar said the bor­ough spends $7 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly to col­lect garbage in 11 dis­tricts. "We are not get­ting our mon­ey's worth. There­fore I read the ri­ot act to the de­part­ment: 'ei­ther shape up or ship out.' Peo­ple are grum­bling that garbage col­lec­tion takes place at odd hours when it's sup­posed to be col­lect­ed be­tween 5 and 10 am.

"We are hear­ing that the trucks pass at hours in the af­ter­noon. There is sup­posed to be a check­er mon­i­tor­ing this and the work is not be­ing done," he said. The may­or said the bor­ough was al­so in­formed that cor­po­ra­tion em­ploy­ees were us­ing bor­ough equip­ment as cesspool trucks and back­hoes to do pri­vate jobs. He said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been launched and peo­ple would be trans­ferred if found guilty.

Nages­sar said he has tak­en a no-non­sense ap­proach in run­ning the bor­ough. He al­so said there was still no place to house the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion in Ch­agua­nas. He said Bonifice Oga­ma, an en­gi­neer the bor­ough hired from Kenya, blanked a po­ten­tial build­ing for the com­mis­sion at Ram­saran Street be­cause it was not up to stan­dard. Nages­sar said the own­ers of the build­ing have so far re­fused to sub­mit struc­tur­al draw­ings of the build­ing to the en­gi­neer.