Eight months after receiving a fleet of new trucks, the Sanitation Service Authority (SSA) is again struggling to pick up garbage around the country.
So acute is the problem, an environmental sector source revealed yesterday that while personnel in the north of the island were trying to figure out how to remove garbage from the side of the road in five parishes with just one truck, the top brass of the agency was being summoned to a meeting at the Ministry of the Environment in Warrens, St Michael.
That meeting, involving both the executive management and members of the board of directors, was still in progress at Warrens Tower 2 at 7:30 last night.
Overall, the source explained, the SSA had been able to place an average of only 17 working trucks on the road daily over the past month, while it needed no fewer than 26 to be able to adequately cover the island.
Earlier this week, 14 trucks were pulled off the road with a variety of complaints from operators, including broken fuel lines, faulty brakes and lights, an inability to engage gears and not starting, with a number of them stuck in the garage at Trans-Tech, one of the private operator SSA employs to undertake repairs.
