2 im­ages

CHARLES KONG SOO

"Buy­ing scrap iron old bat­tery buy­ing" or the theme song from the Amer­i­can com­e­dy show San­ford and Son were not heard in Eco Park, St He­le­na, on Thurs­day.

The two men pick­ing through the garbage there sal­vaging scrap met­al and load­ing it in­to their pick­up gave that junk col­lect­ing feel­ing, how­ev­er.

A dump truck from V & V Con­trac­tors, from St He­le­na, had just dis­gorged its tray of garbage.

The park was be­ing used as a stag­ing site by con­trac­tors to tem­porar­i­ly dump garbage and flood de­stroyed items from the sur­round­ing ar­eas.

Res­i­dents who could not sal­vage their house­hold ap­pli­ances, fur­ni­ture, and items from the flood­wa­ters placed them curb­side for pick­up.

Don't call them junkmen, call them waste con­trollers, re­cy­cling tech­ni­cians, steel sal­vagers, an­tique fanciers, clas­sic re­stor­ers or junk pi­rates.

One man's junk can be an­oth­er man's trea­sure and there is a ver­i­ta­ble trea­sure trove in restor­ing tossed out fur­ni­ture and house­hold goods. Just be wary of buy­ing cars at ridicu­lous­ly cheap prices in flood­ed out ar­eas, though. With a lit­tle el­bow grease, dry­ing out, sand­pa­per­ing, a new coat of paint or var­nish, new up­hol­stery, wa­ter dam­aged cup­boards, wardrobes, ta­bles, chairs, are giv­en new life by these junk­yard en­tre­pre­neurs at bar­gain prices.

The Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Coun­cil­lor for St Au­gus­tine South/Pi­ar­co/St He­le­na Khublal Pal­too, whose purview the park falls un­der for his com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion.

Pal­too said, “It was done in or­der to speed up de­liv­ery and pick­up. The Eco Park is a pub­lic-pri­vate en­ter­prise and is not owned by the cor­po­ra­tion.

“We got some vol­un­teers and back­hoes and trucks from some con­trac­tors to help. The garbage pile-up on the main road was caus­ing traf­fic, so we store it there at the park and will move it (this) week­end.

“It is a fan­tas­tic idea to speed up op­er­a­tions if you have one truck to go Port-of-Spain (Beetham land­fill) and come back and have to wait un­til it comes back.

“We al­so have a back­hoe on stand­by all the time here and most of the trucks are from the area, V&V, A&A, and Sat Sais.”

When asked who au­tho­rised the park to be used for that pur­pose, Pal­too told the Sun­day Guardian to con­tact the park’s co­or­di­na­tor, Bob­by Mara­jh.

When con­tact­ed, Mara­jh said it was the St He­le­na De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion who were the own­ers of the park and he was one of the di­rec­tors on board.

He said it was a tem­po­rary mea­sure to en­sure the area was cleaned up quick­ly af­ter the flood­ing.

Mara­jh said the con­trac­tors gave the as­sur­ance that they will re­store and sani­tise the park and al­so re­pair any struc­tur­al dam­age that may have been caused.