Deputy Mayor Robert Williams said Monday that the fire at the Princes Street dump could have been contained since the end of June, but reluctant workers led to the escalation of the situation.
Speaking on the issue after it was raised at City Hall’s statutory meeting, Williams said that at the end of June the Solid Waste Director Hubert Urlin had warned of the dump’s potential to catch afire after streams of smoke had started to emanate from it. On June 30th a visit to the dump was made by council officials and even then it was instructed that equipment be deployed to deal with the situation before it could escalate.
However, Williams said, municipality workers at the time refused to be deployed since they had issues with working overtime as they would not have received overtime pay and so the situation was allowed to spiral out of control and affect hundreds of residents.
The deputy mayor also stated that the task force that was set up two years ago to handle the situation was not put into immediate action.
Stabroek News had reported earlier that the council had met with some resistance from some of its workers who had refused to enter the dump, not only because of the health risks involved in doing so but because they were afraid that heavy duty machinery could have caused some parts of the dump to cave in. Mayor Hamilton Green had said then that action would have been taken against reluctant workers.
Meanwhile Williams emphasized that reviews need to be done and measures put in place to deal with the likelihood of the dump being on fire.
And Green said on Monday too that a part of the plan to keep the dump under control is for it to remain continuously damp, especially in the dry season which would require pumps to be stationed at the dump intermittently.
