Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@

guardian.co.tt

For five days garbage piled up in the Ma­yaro dis­trict, cre­at­ing a stink, but be­gin­ning on Wednes­day, res­i­dents were able to breathe a sigh of re­lief.

Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ray­mond Co­zi­er con­firmed yes­ter­day that garbage re­moval in the af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties re­sumed on Wednes­day.

Apol­o­gis­ing to res­i­dents and vis­i­tors, Co­zi­er said there had been is­sues be­tween the ad­min­is­tra­tion and a con­trac­tor re­spon­si­ble for re­mov­ing the garbage in Mafek­ing Vil­lage, Ker­na­ham, Plum Mi­tan, Or­toire, Guayagua­yare and en­vi­rons.

In a re­lease, Co­zi­er as­sured that the sit­u­a­tion was not the norm in the re­gion as they had al­ways treat­ed garbage re­moval with ur­gency and reg­u­lar­i­ty to en­sure that the re­gion’s hy­giene was para­mount.

How­ev­er, he said, over the last few months, there had been some is­sues be­tween the ad­min­is­tra­tion and a par­tic­u­lar con­trac­tor.

He said the con­trac­tor had with­held his ser­vices un­til the is­sues were sort­ed out.

Co­zi­er said, “To re-es­tab­lish a ser­vice to the ar­eas, the ad­min­is­tra­tion sought to en­gage oth­er ser­vices to en­sure the san­i­ta­tion of our re­gion is se­cured. That took some days, with­out try­ing to ex­plain all the de­tails in get­ting that done.”

He con­firmed that the trucks were sent out on Wednes­day, and health work­ers were dis­patched to re­move the garbage and clean the streets.

Co­zi­er con­firmed that two com­pactors and four trucks were out yes­ter­day re­mov­ing garbage with work­ers op­er­at­ing on two shifts through­out the day. He thanked res­i­dents and vis­i­tors for their pa­tience.