EDITORIAL - Right management needed to return NSWMA to core

The problem, someone should explain to Sandrea Falconer, is not at its worst with bad boards, especially if there is talented and competent management. For good managers will often mask the inadequacies of their mediocre governors.

It is not so easy the other way round, when you misalign executive talent and the job to be accomplished.

In any event, it is disingenuous of anyone to parade the naming of former education minister, Maxine Henry-Wilson to the chairmanship of an agency board to make the case for the quality of talent the Simpson Miller administration is appointing to boards. Mrs Henry-Wilson's intellect and achievements speak for themselves.

Few, too, would engage in a prolonged debate over whether John-Paul White, with advanced degrees in engineering, can be a competent chairman of the Rural Water Supply Ltd, despite being a losing electoral candidate for the governing People's National Party (PNP). There are others of this type.

Flogging at the trough

Many, though, including this newspaper, will not, unreasonably, question the suitability of Jennifer Edwards as executive director of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), whose appointment was not formally announced, but received a back-door confirmation by Ms Falconer.

Indeed, Ms Falconer has robustly defended Ms Edwards' ability to do the job. She declared the PNP politician/activist and former close aide of Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller was not only "a trained public administrator" but an "excellent organiser".

These are essentially the same talents that we hailed for Ms Edwards' predecessor, Joan Gordon-Webley, except that Mrs Gordon-Webley was a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) politician. That party lost the election and the Government.

During the four years it was in Opposition, the PNP often claimed that the NSWMA, with its multibillion-dollar budget, was run like an overstuffed pork barrel. That, of course, was in line with the characterisation a former contractor general placed on the agency during an earlier PNP tenure.

Perhaps Ms Edwards is, indeed, an excellent organiser and administrator, who will break the perceived cycle of corruption at the agency, for which we will be duly grateful. She might even get the garbage trucks to operate to a schedule and maintain relative cleanliness in major towns.

But that, for us, would not be sufficient.

Time again for big idea

The NSWMA was conceived as a comprehensive solid waste-management agency. It has evolved merely into an agency that collects garbage that it deposits at dumps.

The larger concept of an integrated, scientific approach to solid waste management, such as the household sorting of garbage, and recycling at modern landfills - if it remains part of the NSWMA mandate - seems to be a deep and distant memory.

The cause, it is largely claimed, is a lack of resources. We insist that, fundamentally, it is a failure of leadership. The big idea of the NSWMA largely shrivelled when Ana Treasure, with appropriate training in waste management and a background in engineering, left the job as executive director in the agency's early days. The political weeds overtook the vision.

We feel that it is time for the NSWMA to be led again by someone with the background in solid waste management, engineering and/or environmental science. John-Paul White mightn't have been a bad choice.

But then, Ms Edwards may just surprise us.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.