Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

A pile up garbage in the vicin­i­ty of near the Bert Al­lette Park on Nor­folk Street, Bel­mont, is a source of con­cern to near­by res­i­dents who are ap­peal­ing for the au­thor­i­ties to take ac­tion to end the dump­ing.

The un­sight­ly ac­cu­mu­la­tion of waste at the cor­ner of Nor­folk Street and Reid Lane in­cludes bags of garbage and tree trim­mings.

Res­i­dents said while a garbage truck ser­vices the area at least three times a week, there are no garbage bins to con­tain the waste.

“There is need for a big dis­pos­al bin in this area. All over Bel­mont, right up the road there are on­ly cor­ners they dump­ing rub­bish, right down the road, rub­bish dump­ing on cor­ners, there are no bins,” said one res­i­dent who didn’t want to be iden­ti­fied.

“It en­cour­ages rats, big rats, that will leave and come in­to your prop­er­ty which is very dis­gust­ing to me, plus the smell does be re­al­ly, re­al­ly bad, they need to put back bins.”

A fa­ther of five, who has lived in the area for more than 30 years, said bins were re­moved near­ly sev­en years ago and since then there have been prob­lems with heaps of waste that over­flow the pave­ments.

“It is a health risk at all times. It have peo­ple who does throw their in­jec­tions in the rub­bish too, so that is a next prob­lem by it­self, you get­ting any­thing in the rub­bish. We need fa­cil­i­ties around the com­mu­ni­ty where we could put the rub­bish in them and right now it have peo­ple here worse than the dogs, they go­ing in the rub­bish and scat­ter­ing it, wors­en­ing the prob­lem,” he com­plained.

Res­i­dents are call­ing for a prop­er waste man­age­ment plan for the area.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Mal­ouia Bourne, the coun­cil­lor for Bel­mont North/West, said there are plans to tack­le the prob­lem of dump­ing.

“House­hold garbage in Bel­mont con­tin­ues to be col­lect­ed on the pub­lished sched­ule days: Sun­days, Mon­days, Wednes­days and Fri­days,” she said.

“Due to the width of some roads and the size of the ve­hi­cle, san­i­ta­tion work­ers walk door-to-door to col­lect and bring garbage out to the garbage truck. Il­le­gal dump­ing con­tin­ues to be a chal­lenge in sev­er­al parts of the coun­try, and the coun­cil is cur­rent­ly de­vel­op­ing ed­u­ca­tion and en­force­ment ini­tia­tives in con­junc­tion with our Pub­lic Health and Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice de­part­ments to ad­dress the chal­lenge from all an­gles.”