An­na-Lisa Paul

This is how Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter An­cil An­toine has de­scribed the con­di­tions that work­ers at the Beetham land­fill are op­er­at­ing un­der dai­ly.

Stand­ing a few feet away from an open sew­er lo­cat­ed out­side the male and fe­male wash­rooms yes­ter­day, An­toine promised to pro­vide im­me­di­ate re­lief for the work­ers by en­sur­ing that the wa­ter sup­ply which was dis­con­nect­ed two years ago was re­stored; and that an im­proved elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply was made avail­able.

Vow­ing to take a note to Cab­i­net next week de­tail­ing the plight of the work­ers, An­toine said in­ter­im mea­sures would in­clude paving the com­pound yard in or­der to re­duce the dust and mud; re­fur­bish­ing the cafe­te­ria, of­fice and recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties; up­grad­ing the bath­rooms and change rooms; as well as the laun­dry area and var­i­ous work bays.

An­toine said, "That is some­thing that I am look­ing for­ward to bring to my Cab­i­net col­leagues for the im­me­di­ate re­lief of the san­i­ta­tion work­ers at the land­fill, so I don't think I will have prob­lems putting through the re­quest."

Halfway through his fact-find­ing vis­it to the land­fill, which be­gan around 10 am, An­toine agreed that the con­di­tions were "in­hu­mane, but we could im­prove it."

Ac­com­pa­nied by of­fi­cials of the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SWM­COL) and the In­dus­tri­al Gen­er­al and San­i­ta­tion Work­ers Union (IGSWU), An­toine toured the fa­cil­i­ty as he heard of the mos­qui­to and pi­geon in­fes­ta­tion; the non-ex­is­tent wa­ter sup­ply; the lack of mod­ern equip­ment and pro­tec­tive cloth­ing; the un­san­i­tary con­di­tions which in­clud­ed non-func­tion­al toi­lets; pol­lut­ed riv­er wa­ter of­ten used to wet the gen­er­al yard; the ex­ten­sive col­lec­tion of derelict ve­hi­cles; and the gen­er­al lack of fa­cil­i­ties for work­ers.

Re­veal­ing that the Gov­ern­ment had a com­pre­hen­sive plan for waste man­age­ment fa­cil­i­ties at Beetham, Gua­napo and For­res Park, An­toine said a spe­cial com­mit­tee had been con­vened by Cab­i­net to for­mu­late for­ward-think­ing strate­gies in this area.

This com­mit­tee was said to in­clude of­fi­cials and tech­nocrats from the min­istries of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment; Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment; En­er­gy and Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

Adding that he would soon be tak­ing a note to Cab­i­net invit­ing ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est for the con­struc­tion of a Waste to En­er­gy Plant at the Beetham land­fill, An­toine said fu­ture ini­tia­tives in­clud­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of a re­cy­cling plant, al­so at Beetham, mak­ing this lo­ca­tion the lead­ing waste sta­tion in terms of gov­ern­ment's fu­ture plans for waste de­vel­op­ment in the coun­try.

Elab­o­rat­ing on parts of the macro plan re­gard­ing waste man­age­ment, An­toine said the Gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly se­cured US$10 mil­lion to ad­dress the prob­lems of leach­ing at the Gua­napo land­fill.

Con­cern has sur­faced about the abil­i­ty of lo­cal land­fills which are not lined to re­tain leachate which is the liq­uid that re­sults from the de­com­po­si­tion of waste.

Adding that the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment was set to take over the port­fo­lio of waste col­lec­tion while his min­istry would be tasked with land­fill man­age­ment, An­toine said they had to get se­ri­ous about re­duc­ing the amount of waste that was be­ing gen­er­at­ed and get in­volved in trans­form­ing it in­to us­able en­er­gy.

An­toine said this would tie in with fu­ture plans to de­vel­op a pow­er com­plex in the El So­cor­ro/Barataria area, which would re­duce the de­pen­dence on the sup­ply from the South and feed the North-west cor­ri­dor and To­ba­go.

Pro­vid­ing a first-hand ac­count of the is­sues faced by long-suf­fer­ing em­ploy­ees, pres­i­dent of the IGSWU Robert Be­na­cia ex­pressed hope that An­toine would de­liv­er on his promis­es as he said work­ers were pre­pared to stop protest­ing and re­turn to work as a sign of good faith.

High­light­ing the myr­i­ad prob­lems which he claimed suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments had failed to ad­dress, Be­na­cia said the cur­rent SWM­COL board, which was on­ly in­stalled in Jan­u­ary, want­ed to do the right thing and im­prove the work­ing con­di­tions but was se­vere­ly con­strained in terms of fund­ing.

Sub­ject­ing the min­is­ter to a very can­did look at the de­plorable con­di­tions, Be­na­cia said, "We are the lead­ers in waste man­age­ment but there are con­trac­tors around the coun­try rap­ing the Trea­sury and treat­ing the work­ers like they are slaves."

He said the 200-plus work­ers at var­i­ous land­fills en­dured the con­di­tions as they were com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing an es­sen­tial ser­vice to the pop­u­la­tion.

How­ev­er, he said, the time had come for Gov­ern­ment to do its part to im­prove the in­fra­struc­ture for the work­ers and the se­cu­ri­ty guards who pre­serve law and or­der at the dif­fer­ent sites.

Be­na­cia al­so sug­gest­ed ways of re­duc­ing SWM­COL's de­pen­den­cy on gov­ern­ment fund­ing with the im­me­di­ate in­tro­duc­tion of a tip­ping fee.

A gate fee or tip­ping fee is the charge levied up­on a giv­en quan­ti­ty of waste re­ceived at a waste pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

In the case of a land­fill, it is gen­er­al­ly levied to off­set the cost of open­ing, main­tain­ing and even­tu­al­ly clos­ing the site.

Hav­ing re­ceived no in­crease in the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion for the past eight years, SWM­COL's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ronald Roach said, "A lot of the things we are do­ing is be­low stan­dard and we need to ad­dress it."

Ad­mit­ting that some of the prob­lems point­ed out yes­ter­day were easy fix­es, Roach said some oth­ers re­quired in­creased funds to rec­ti­fy.

He said SWM­COL need­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $120 mil­lion per year to ad­e­quate­ly car­ry out its op­er­a­tions, but they had been forced to op­er­ate on $75 mil­lion since 2009.

De­clar­ing that this was "woe­ful­ly short," Roach said the World Bank had cal­cu­lat­ed that a coun­try with the re­port­ed lev­el of in­come of T&T should have a dai­ly waste dis­pos­al bud­get that ranged be­tween a min­i­mum of US$40 per tonne and a max­i­mum of US$100 per tonne.

Re­veal­ing that T&T was cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing at US$17 per tonne, Roach said leg­is­la­tion was al­so an­oth­er way to en­sure that the pop­u­la­tion fol­lowed the reg­u­la­tions.

Heart­ened by the min­is­ter's ap­pear­ance yes­ter­day, many of the work­ers at the site said they were ea­ger to wit­ness the trans­for­ma­tion of the fa­cil­i­ty which, they claimed, had been ne­glect­ed for too long.