THE NATIONAL Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) is to get 20 compactors from France, shortly.
Chairman Alston Stewart says the equipment is to be obtained at a cost of nearly US$2 million which, he said, was being provided through a trade loan.
The garbage collection agency is also still looking to source used vehicles from Japan and the United States.
The NSWMA has come in for criticism because of the frequent pile-up of garbage in some communities.
Mr. Stewart said that trucks have been trying to keep to the twice weekly pick up schedule and that there have been no particular problems in recent times. However, 25 per cent of the trucks need to be retired, he said.
Last September, the waste management authority chairman explained that a few communities had a pile-up of garbage because of the malfunctioning of a number of garbage trucks, which could not be repaired because of a shortage of money.
At least 55 per cent of the 116 trucks fleet are between 10 and 12 years old and it was not even feasible to repair some malfunctioning trucks in that age group in the long run, he said at the time. He added that those operating were currently stretched but were still being used.
The chairman has also constantly pointed to the agency's cash flow problem.
Last September, he said this was because of a shortfall in the collection of property taxes, which it uses to run its solid waste operations and a landfill at Riverton City, Kingston.
The agency, which collects 60 per cent of the island's solid waste from communities along routes stretching from St. Thomas to Clarendon, said then that it needed $450 million yearly to meet demands relating to solid waste collection. A projection which fell $100 million short of what was hoped last year, Mr. Stewart said in 2001.
