Councillor blasts health ministry

Councillor for the Waterford division in St Catherine, Fenley Douglas, has criticised the Ministry of Health and Wellness for contracting private pest control firms to assist the Government in its drive to combat the dengue outbreak.

Douglas told The Gleaner that while he accepts the efforts by the Government to deal with the dengue outbreak, contracting private pest control firms to assist with the process is a waste of resources.

“The short-sightedness of the Ministry of Health to effectively deal with the dengue crisis is causing a drain on the Jamaican people tax dollars when it never have to get to this stage,” Douglas reasoned.

“Both the Swing Fogging and the Ultra Low Volume machines are priced at an affordable amount of money, so what the ministry should have done is invest in some of these machines and train these temporary workers to use them, then they would have both machines and personnel to operate them in times like these instead of expending millions of dollars on private contractors,” stated Douglas.

According to him, the parish council in earlier days made the proposal to the ministry to train community members to do the fogging. However, this suggestion was rejected.

“The problem of mosquito infestation after periods of heavy rain is real, so given this scenario the Ministry of Health should invest in some of these machines and train the manpower to operate them so that there is an established system in place to deal with eventualities like these, which would be far less than paying exorbitant sums to hire pest control companies,” Douglas said.

He added: “Whether or not these private companies are functioning under the ministry’s guidelines, it does not look good, it gives the impression of another ‘eat a food’ scheme to enrich selected persons off the taxpayers dime, while the real problem is not being dealt with,” the councillor noted.