Guyana is taking steps to better organize its waste-recycling efforts by building a storage area for recyclables at the country’s largest sanitary landfill at Haags Bosch, East Bank Demerara says Minister in the Ministry of Local Government Norman Whittaker.
Yesterday, bids were opened, at the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB), for the construction of a multi-million dollar storage area at the landfill to facilitate the work of those who sort hundreds of tons of garbage on a daily basis.
With the procuring entity being the Georgetown Solid Waste Management Programme and with an engineer’s estimate of $7,329,500, two bids were submitted and opened. The first being R.P. Construction Agency who submitted a bid pegged at $7, 805,285 and Puran Brothers Disposal Inc at $12,346,700 .
Speaking with this newspaper on the proposed plan for the site, Project supervisor, Mr. Gilkes (only name given), who Whittaker referred this newspaper to, said that the project was intended to have recyclables stored in a more organized manner.
“At the site currently we have recyclables, sorters, men and women who check through the garbage and put aside what has economic value. Right now they are storing those things at a portion at the side of the fill itself. So what we are doing is constructing a designated area so that the sorters can store the stuff and the buyers can come to purchase these”, he said.
Gilkes explained that while there are booming sales for cardboard, glass bottles and scrap metal, plastic bottles, which is the number one problem seen all over the city, have been put on the back shelf as buyers are encountering a problem exporting them. “Plastic bottle exporters have been getting a problem exporting these bottles so sales on those have stopped”, he said.
