It has been sev­en days since David Charles was killed at the For­res Park land­fill in Clax­ton Bay. Now, howew­er, the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SWM­COL) is se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing new rules for sal­vagers at dump­sites.

The man­age­ment of SWM­COL stood be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, as part of an “In­quiry in­to the im­pact of land­fills on the en­vi­ron­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

But from the start of the pro­ceed­ings, JSC chair­man, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor De­oroop Teemal, thought it was nec­es­sary to dis­cuss the is­sue of sal­vaging, giv­en the re­cent tragedy.

Teemal sought to find out if there is any pol­i­cy re­gard­ing on-site sal­vaging at the land­fills, to which SWM­COL an­swered in the neg­a­tive.

How­ev­er, SWM­COL CEO Kevin Thomp­son ex­plained that there is a draft pol­i­cy that the board of di­rec­tors has asked be giv­en ac­tive at­ten­tion giv­en the re­cent tragedy.

“So we are ac­tive­ly dis­cussing whether we will now re­quire as a con­di­tion to sal­vage at the land­fills that you must be­long to a co­op­er­a­tive, then al­so as a con­se­quence that you must un­der­go some HSE (Health, Safe­ty and the En­vi­ron­ment) train­ing in or­der to ac­cess the land­fills,” Thomp­son said.

Thomp­son added that there is no sim­ple so­lu­tion to a prob­lem they have been fac­ing for sev­er­al decades.

He said as it re­lates to the For­res Park land­fill, they put se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers at the en­trance, fined and dis­cour­aged trucks go­ing in­to the fa­cil­i­ty from hav­ing sal­vagers ac­cess them at the en­trance.

“Chair­man, it is with some re­gret that I would have to ad­vise that this has brought us lim­it­ed suc­cess.”

Thomp­son said while they have got­ten the co­op­er­a­tion of the truck dri­vers, there has been a new sit­u­a­tion emerg­ing.

“Now, the sal­vagers are now run­ning be­tween the trucks dri­ving at 50km/h to grab things off the trucks as they pass, which is an­oth­er very dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion,” he said.

He said SWM­COL al­so has to be mind­ful of how it treats the sit­u­a­tion, as it is a big trade.

At the Beetham land­fill, there are be­tween 40 to 50 sal­vagers, while at For­res Park there are about 30.

“It is a num­ber of peo­ple who sup­port their fam­i­lies and earn their liveli­hoods in this way and we have to be very con­scious of the steps that we take,” he added.

He said pre­vi­ous bans on sal­vaging did not work and due to the large ex­panse of land, it is im­pos­si­ble to fence the en­tire perime­ter of the land­fills.

On June 24, sal­vager David Charles died af­ter he was ac­ci­den­tal­ly crushed by a D8 trac­tor that was com­pact­ing in an area with­in the For­res Park land­fill.