VASWANI
THE NEWLY appointed board of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), under the chairmanship of businessman Prakash Vaswani, has moved to correct administrative breaches at the agency.
Both the auditor general and the contractor general tabled a report in Parliament in July, which painted a picture of cronyism and mismanagement at the solid waste agency.
Mr. Vaswani said yesterday that the recommendations in the report were being implemented as "a matter of urgency" by the new board.
TRANSPARENCY
"We are doing our task fearlessly and transparently and we want to be held accountable by taxpayers for doing our job," Mr Vaswani told The Gleaner.
He said the Authority requires all prospective contractors to be registered with the National Contracts Commission by September 1 and to present tax compliance certificates.
Mr. Vaswani succeeds Alston Stewart, who, along with the entire board, resigned earlier this year after allegations of mismanagement surfaced. Local Government Minister Portia Simpson Miller called in the Contractor-General and the Auditor-General to probe the operations of the Authority.
The new NSWMA chairman also chairs the Road Maintenance Fund of the Ministry of Transport and Works. He is also the past chairman of the National Water Commission.
Other members of the new NSWMA board include:
Loraine Robinson, permanent secretary in the local government ministry; Errol Greene, Executive director/NSWMA; George Saunders of the Jamaica Institute of Engineers; Grace Allen of the Social Development Commission and Milton Brown, Mayor of May Pen.
