80 August 2016 - Business View Caribbean
bridges, buildings, and heavy equipment (bulldozer,
excavator, waste compactor, and a truck to facilitate
the maintenance of sanitary standards on-site through
daily covering of waste). The SLSWMA headquarters
is located at Maurice Mason Avenue in Sans Souci,
Castries.
In August 2014, the Authority commissioned an in-
dustrial grade shredding machine to address an over
eight-year accumulation of tires at the Deglos Sanitary
Landfill. The machine replaces two smaller, expired
machines, and has been working consistently towards
reducing the threat presented by the accumulation of
the used tires. Despite the capability of the machine,
approximately eight thousand tires are processed per
month. The throughput is limited as a result of having
to wash the soiled tires before shredding.
BVM: How is waste collection paid for?
Auguste:
There’s no ‘tipping’ fee at the landfill as there
is in other countries where tipping fees help to fund
the operations. In Saint Lucia it was thought that the
imposition of the fee might discourage private people
and other waste haulers from coming to the landfill,
leading to indiscriminate disposal of waste elsewhere
in the environment where you don’t need it. I suppose
you can say that we’re a little different in approach in
that respect. Haulers are encouraged to bring waste
to the landfill by providing free access, except for com-
mercial entities that request special disposals. In such
cases fees are charged and contribute to the gener-
ation of revenue to the SLSWMA. One of the recom-
mendations made by the World Bank for the project
was to consider fees to be charged per household for
waste collection, and in some of the OECS, these fees
are actually implemented. In Saint Lucia, however, the
government decided that it did not want to impose an-
other tax, so the cost was absorbed through funding
the deficit that the Authority projects for any particular
year, by way of a budgetary contribution. There have
been inconsistencies in the extent of the contribution
as no proper measure was put in place to ensure the
implementation of the intention.
