Garbage pile-up breeding rats at Falmouth market
Published:Thursday | April 21, 2022 | 12:06 AMLeon Jackson/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
VENDORS OPERATING in the $300-million market on Market Street in Falmouth are engaged in a daily rat race, fuelled by a lack of garbage collection for three weeks, which has created a breeding ground and dining area for the rodents.
“For three weeks now there has been no collection of garbage. We set rat poison and you find some dead ones or you smell them rotting in some corner,” one of the 700 registered vendors told The Gleaner.
A butcher in the market related an occasion where he heard his daughter screaming and looked around to see her standing on a chair. When he enquired about her discomfort, he said she responded saying “one king-size rat just ran across my foot”.
Another vendor, who requested anonymity, said rats are destroying produce.
“We pay $2,000 per week for fees. Yet when these rats bite up our products, they have to be disposed of and (there is) no compensation,” the vendor said.
The lack of garbage collection is also affecting Granville Primary School, Principal Ivanhoe Gordon noted.
“I have a school of 600 occupants,” he told The Gleaner. “With no garbage collection for three weeks prior to the Easter break, everybody is exposed to all of the ill effects that rats and cockroaches can spread,” Gordon said.
A LONG-STANDING PROBLEM
The problem with rats is a long-standing one and from as far back as June 2021, the Public Health Department had ordered the butcher stalls closed because of rat infestation.
Addressing the contributory issue of garbage collection, Phillip Service, councillor for the Martha Brae division in which the Granville Primary School falls, said they had been given assurances that the dumps would have been cleared.
“I have reached out to solid waste management and they had promised to pick up the garbage in the area. They have not done so yet and I will get back to them on the matter,” he responded.
For three years now, there has been a promise from Local Government to build a transfer station for the garbage. The intention was to ease the need to travel over 25 miles to the dump in Montego Bay. This came about because the original dump site in Daniel Town had been rejected by residents. Councillor for the Sherwood division, Dunstan Harper, recommended another site at Hyde Hall.
Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Desmond McKenzie, recently commented on the latter situation.
He said: “There are some design technicalities to be ironed out, but the plans to construct the station remain.”
Damain Jones, regional operations manager, National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), with responsibility for the collection of garbage in the market and its environs, promised to find out why the garbage is not collected and respond to The Gleaner. That response was not received at the time of writing.
Efforts to get Audley Gordon, executive director, NSWMA, via telephone, failed, as his phone rang without an answer.