Jamaica: Residents face health crisis over uncollected garbage in Blackstonedge

Jamaica: Residents of Blackstonedge, St Ann, Jamaica, are facing a serious public health crisis due to uncollected garbage that has been accumulating since September. And now with the fear of disease outbreak looming they are urging the authorities to help them.

In a local media’s interview residents pleaded for urgent intervention from the waste and health authorities to help them as they are saying “We are not asking anything big from you guys, it’s just a matter of life and we also want risk free life, where we can live peacefully without getting infected.”

One of the residents also claimed that “we have been facing this issue since September and authorities are taking no action against it even after the complaints that we have made.”

They said “garbage has been piling up and attracting unwanted diseases and rats or stray dogs prompting them to burn the garbage in the absence of regular cleaning and collection by the garbage cleaner.”

Jervis Hamilton, a member of the Community Development Committee also shared his thoughts while stating that “we people are only demanding from the government to assign someone who can collect the garbage at least once per month, where persons can come and place the garbage in the garbage skip and have it collected.”

He further stated that “In 2023, as a Labour Day project after poor garbage disposal was identified as a major community concern, the skip was constructed for the people to put their garbage in that skip, which will be collected by the garbage collector trucks, travelling from Galina in St Mary, then through Moneague and Walkerswood.”

“But they only collected garbage when we people personally paid them from our pockets and when we failed to pay them again as the funds were exhausted, they stopped collecting garbage and it started to pile up again.”

Hamilton also emphasised that “we also made a complaint to t Ann Municipal Corporation where the officers told us to submit a formal letter to the chief executive officer of the corporation, and which we will be submitting this week.”

Responding to which Chief Public Health Inspector Grayson Hutchinson, showed serious concern and ordered to remove the garbage as soon as possible while stating that “We would not want anyone to be get affected by the diseases formed by the collected garbage, as this is a real risk of life and the situation needs to be remedied as quickly as possible.”