Major clean-up planned for Hanover as garbage pile-up causes rat invasion

Western Bureau

Acting regional operations manager for Western Parks and Markets (WPM) Management Limited, Dramaine Jones, says the agency has planned a major clean-up in town centres across the parish of Hanover for the holiday period.

Jones says mass backlog cleanings have also been planned with the expected injection of new trucks in the system by Christmas.

He was responding to issues raised at the Hanover Municipal Corporation’s (HMC) monthly meeting for November about rat infestation reportedly due to several months of uncollected garbage across areas, and growing concerns about the impact on public health.

Reports to the meeting from the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) through its subsidiary in western Jamaica, WPM, are that for the last three months, August to October, there was an increase in the backlog of garbage to be cleared across the parish.

In August it was reported by WPM that there were 34 districts across the parish with backlog of garbage to be cleared. This figure increased to 45 in September, with a further increase to 62 in October.

Councillors in the HMC all identified the garbage pile-up across the parish as the reason for the increased presence of rats as the situation provided the perfect breeding ground for them.

Deputy mayor of Lucea, Andria Dehaney-Grant, said that during recent heavy rains in her municipal corporation division of Sandy Bay, residents witnessed several huge rats being washed out of their breeding places and floating downstream.

“One problem is breeding another, and we need to get rid of the original problem of the pile-up of garbage before we can properly control or get rid of the rat problem,” Dehaney-Grant stated.

Councillor Marvel Sewell of the Green Island division said that there had been no garbage collection in his division for some time.

“I can’t recall the last time a garbage truck come into my space (Green Island council division), and the residents across the division are reporting that there are a lot of rats present at all the garbage dumpsters,” he stated.

He enquired of the Medical Officer of Health (MOH) for the parish, Dr Kaushal Singh, the number of leptospirosis cases that have been noted for the parish in the last month. Leptospirosis is a disease that is present in the rodents, and can be transmitted to humans if they (the humans) come in contact with the waste of the rodents.

Sewell said that his curiosity about the rat-borne disease was piqued because of the large number of the rodents present in his HMC divisional area.

Singh advised that two notifications of the disease were received by the Hanover Health Department (HHD) and investigated during the month October, one from the parish capital, Lucea, and the other from Hopewell. This, he said, compares with one case during the similar period in 2021. There was also one suspected case reported to the HHD in September compared to none in September last year.

He said despite the low figure, the health department would not be complacent and was requesting assistance from the HMC towards implementing a rat-baiting project across the parish.

“We (at the HHD) have received reports that there is rat infestation in some areas of the parish, I am not going to say in which areas, but one thing to highlight is that proper garbage disposal is key to prevent an increase in the rat population,” Singh stated. He said continuous baiting has to be done to have any serious effect on controlling the rat population across the parish.

But there was indecision among the councillors on the timing of the rat-baiting exercise, whether it should be done before or after the garbage backlog was cleared.

The MOH indicated nonetheless that his department will be forwarding a project proposal for the eradication of the rat population within the parish to the HMC, for its financial support.