An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Thou­sands of Port-of-Spain res­i­dents and busi­ness­es could be fac­ing a messy sit­u­a­tion af­ter two garbage truck dri­vers were re­port­ed­ly in­struct­ed to hand over the keys to the ve­hi­cles to the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice yes­ter­day.

Re­ports are that a su­per­vi­sor at­tached to the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion con­tact­ed Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer An­nette Seaforth yes­ter­day morn­ing and she au­tho­rised him to go to City Hall and “col­lect the keys to the two trucks that had been parked up there.” The al­leged in­struc­tion was giv­en just be­fore 10 am.

Con­tact­ed for an up­date around 1 pm, the pres­i­dent of the Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers Union Michael Pren­tice said he was un­sure why the dri­vers had been or­dered to park the trucks at City Hall. Three garbage trucks op­er­ate with­in the ju­ris­dic­tion of the City Cor­po­ra­tion.

Pren­tice said the in­struc­tions would have orig­i­nat­ed from the of­fice of Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne. He said the Trans­port Di­vi­sion man­ag­er re­ceived his or­ders late on Thurs­day evening and this was re­layed to the three dri­vers yes­ter­day morn­ing.

How­ev­er, on­ly two trucks were parked at City Hall as the third is be­ing re­paired.

“I have re­ceived no in­for­ma­tion from any­one. What we are do­ing at this time is prepar­ing with our lawyers, putting all our doc­u­men­ta­tion in place and send­ing out some let­ters to the Cor­po­ra­tion be­cause this has to stop,” Pren­tice said.

The City Cor­po­ra­tion is re­spon­si­ble for garbage col­lec­tion in west Port-of-Spain, in­clud­ing St James, St Clair, Tra­grete Road, Aripi­ta Av­enue, Wood­brook, Mu­cu­rapo Road, the low­er part of Fort George, and parts of Co­corite.

With the garbage trucks out of ser­vice yes­ter­day, Pren­tice re­port­ed: “At this time the place is in a mess be­cause when you don’t pick up garbage for one day it be­comes bad and when you don’t do this for two, three and four days . . . and this is Christ­mas time,.so the pile-up is hu­mon­gous.”

He added“It was more than 72 hours since the garbage was re­moved. This means that the work­ers’ health and safe­ty will come in­to play al­so be­cause de­pend­ing on what type of garbage was put out there, you will find it has start­ed de­cay­ing and it will cause prob­lems to the work­ers.”

May­or Al­leyne did not re­spond to calls for com­ment yes­ter­day.