By Omar Anderson, Staff Reporter
ANGRY KINGSTON and St. Andrew Corporation Councillors insisted yesterday that better monitoring systems be put in place to ensure that taxpayers are getting value for money in the area of garbage collection.
They were reacting to a report of millions of dollars being paid monthly to Metropolitan Parks and Markets to clean the city, although there was no proper system to determine how much garbage had been collected, from which area and over what period.
The issue was raised at the monthly Finance Committee meeting at the Jamaica Conference Centre, Duke Street, downtown Kingston, where it was disclosed that $53 million was paid to MPM last month for cleaning areas in Kingston and St. Andrew.
When the councillors started analysing the expenditure for October, the size of the bill surprised them and triggered a debate about how such a large sum of money could be paid for what they described as a continuously unsatisfactory job.
Angella Brown-Burke, Councillor for the Norman Gardens Division, said councillors had been receiving numerous complaints about MPM's poor record of garbage collection.
She referred to reports that MPM has been having problems with several of its trucks, but said that even if this is true, the solid waste management agency should only be paid for garbage it collects.
Councillor William Hasfal of the Papine Division, chairman of the Finance Committee,
admitted that there was no system to check what had been done.
Explaining how the system works, City Treasurer Lincoln Evans said the Ministry of Local Government normally sends payments for city clean-up to the KSAC, which he said then acts as a "conduit" to pay MPM.
Mrs. Brown-Burke said that when questions were raised at an earlier Finance Committee meeting, she was told that the KSAC would scrutinise carefully every payment invoice the MPM submits and ensure that the work is done before payment is made.
"Normally when you are paid for work done and your truck breaks down and therefore you can't cart away as much garbage as before, you have done less work and you should therefore get less money," Mrs. Brown-Burke said.
Councillor Patricia Morgan of the Dallas Division, also expressed surprise that there were no checks made to determine whether the MPM was being paid for work done.
"MPM is being paid through the KSAC to have the city clean. When you have garbage being piled up on a daily or monthly basis in some areas, and MPM is being paid for the collection of this garbage, then we can't sit down here and say well we can't do anything about it," she said, reminding her colleagues that the KSAC was empowered to withhold payments if it was not satisfied that the MPM has done a good job.
Mrs. Brown-Burke suggested that from now on, every MPM claim must be carefully scrutinised and investigated to ensure that money was being paid for work properly done.
"I would want us to have a mechanism so that when garbage is not collected, it is not paid for as being collected, because if we cannot find a way to do that, then we have no right to be here," she said.
Mr. Evans said he would be asking the KSAC's Internal Audit Department to investigate the matter.
