The municipality should do its own collection and disposal of garbage and not use contractors

Dear Editor,

Once again the citizens of our capital city are confronted with a garbage pile-up and the possibilities of a public health nightmare due to the withdrawal of services by garbage collection and disposal contractors engaged by the Mayor and City Council.

Why is it so difficult for the financial planners at City Hall to become conscious that it was unintelligent to contract out this service, and uneconomical to continue doing so? Certainly, it would make more business sense for them to acquire their own garbage trucks and undertake the collection and disposal of garbage themselves. Why is everyone at City Hall pretending that there is only one option, and that is to privatize this service? Surely the council’s officials must be aware that contracting out garbage collection services is a relatively new phenomenon, and that since days of animal-drawn vehicles until some time in the late 1980s, the council managed its own fleet of vehicles, which effectively collected and disposed of garbage to landfill sites and ‘Old Smokey,’ the incinerator on Princes Street.

It should be noted that during the period when the council did it themselves, it was when Georgetown was gloriously referred to as the ‘Garden City’ and when all of the residents were proud of the beauty and cleanliness of our capital. Today, hundreds of millions dollars are spent each year and yet our capital is referred to as the ‘Garbage City,’ with piles of garbage always evident all around the city.

I would like to propose to the Mayor, that they borrow or raise some money through the sale of municipal bonds, purchase a fleet of trucks and have the council retake full responsibility for the collection and disposal of the city’s garbage It would remove their subjection to the whims and fancies of the contractors; it would be an investment as at the end of the day the trucks would be theirs, and it would be a tremendous saving to the city.

Yours faithfully,
Melanie Camacho