IT IS understandable that Minister of Local Government, Dean Peart, would want to reach out for help to quench the fire that had been raging for days at the Riverton City landfill. The fire had caused a pall of heavy, black smoke to hang over the western end of Kingston. There were serious health concerns and many people were complaining of respiratory problems.

But we might have expected that Mr. Peart would have called on experts in firefighting, or even a pyrotechnist. An engineer or a physicist might have been useful too, or maybe all of them.

Yet, for some inexplicable reason, except that he was coming for free, Mr. Peart preferred Alston Stewart, the former executive chairman of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA). Mr. Stewart was forced to resign less than two years ago in the face of a report by the then Contractor General that accused the board and management of the agency of contriving to breach almost all of the Government's rules and regulations on procurement for $2 billion worth of contracts. No one, however, was accused of personal enrichment.

"I thought that it would be best to get a second opinion, so I called Alston and asked him to meet with my people and just to have a little rap and see what we're doing and suggest how we go forward," Mr. Peart was quoted by this newspaper as saying. He has not denied making the comment.

We do not know which is funnier, or perhaps more absurd: the minister's request or Mr. Stewart's acceptance.

As we are about it, we should, perhaps, just make Mr. Stewart the fire chief. And maybe he might wish to move the Jamaica Fire Brigade's headquarters to Riverton City.

And since he will be already in the area, we might just wish to expand Mr. Stewart's possible mandate from extinguishing fires at the city dump to again being head of the NSWMA.

During Mr. Stewart's time at the NSWMA, there were fires at the dump. But it could hardly be that he personally was at Riverton, running around directing firefighting operations. Well, who knows?

At least, Mr. Stewart is accustomed to metaphoric fires, such as he faced during his stint at the NSWMA in the controversy over the huge cost overrun at the Sandals Whitehouse hotel construction, for which he was project manager on behalf of the Urban Development Corporation. And in this respect, he knows how to fight fire with fire: like the time when he told his critics in the NSWMA issue to bring the evidence or shut their damn mouths.

Let's see how that works at Riverton.