Dump equipment hire costs CIG $1M
Compactor purchased for the George Town landfill
(CNS): Leasing private sector trucks for garbage collection and equipment for the dump set government back over a million dollars in this financial year — and none of it was tendered — as a result of the fires and a high number of technical problems with the equipment. The premier, who took over waste management in January, said that with the investment in equipment the rental bill would go down, as he answered questions in Finance Committee Friday and explained why the lucrative contracts were awarded without bids.
Alden McLaughlin said the ministry was forced to lease trucks to collect rubbish and excavators in particular to deal with the aftermath of blazes at the dump as a result of the failure of the Department of Environmental Health’s equipment. However, he admitted that the leasing contracts, costing almost $1 million, did not go through either the Central Tenders Committee or the departmental tendering process as they were done on an individual ad hoc basis as needed, plus the immediacy of the need did not allow for the time required to tender.
Over $370k was spent on equipment at the dump, almost $420k on collection and more than $100k on general equipment, totalling more than CI$892,000 for private vendor leases that were not tendered.
When questioned by the independent members, Arden McLean and Ezzard Miller, McLaughlin emphatically denied trying to avoid the tendering process but said that this financial year was unprecedented in terms of fires that had to be dealt with, which could not have been predicted, and the amount of equipment failure on both collection and dump management was also significant.
He said government had decided to invest in the fleet and gone through the procurement exercise to get the resources that the DEH needed for collection and management of the dump.
“We will see a different picture,” McLaughlin said about the next financial years as the new equipment would negate the need for leasing.
The premier said the ministry was waiting for just one more piece of machinery which it has bought to bring the fleet up to date.
He explained that three private companies were contracted at different times throughout the year to address the gaps before the new machines arrived. McLaughlin said the excavators were needed to help with the immediate problem of outing fires at the George Town landfill as well as dealing with the hot spots igniting those fires. McLaughlin said the subterranean fires “went on for weeks” and equipment was needed to constantly dig and turn over the garbage to put out the hot spots, which he described as an “expensive and difficult exercise”.
He said, “Over the course of the last two years we have been trying to get the equipment levels back to where they need to be and properly manage the land fill site and the waste collection.”
The premier added that the department had struggled with for many years as it did not have the equipment and resources it needed but he asked for the public’s patience as it was now almost there.
McLaughlin said equipment that the department had previously hoped could be repaired was still having major problems and was described as “unreliable” and was not up to scratch, so it had all been replaced.
Category: Environmental Health, Health
Boy, I wish that by now they would have bought a industrial size chipper so that yard/garden clippings could be dumped and then converted into mulch to be then purchased by the public. To far of a stretch?
DOEH do yourselves a favour. GET OUT of the commercial garbage collection business. Leave it to the private sector to purchase & maintain skips, front loader trucks, grabber trucks, etc. This was OK for government to do in the 70’s & 80’s. NOT any more.
INSIST that all commercial properties & housing complexes over 3 units have access to a skip. Household collection trucks should not be doing this for some businesses & apartments. Give them 12 months to comply or face a fine.
There must be a full investigation public funds spent and no tendering processes followed is a clear breach of various laws and regulations in the Cayman Islands.
Mr. Auditor General we await the outcome of your report.
CNS, could you please verify that there was an article about Cayman Islands Government purchased two new garbage trucks, if so , then why is he talking about leased garbage trucks .
Please teach the drivers of the new garbage trucks to drive them as they paid for them! And maybe we won’t have to read stories such as this.
either way you spin it alden….it’s more incompetence and mismangement on the part of your government…..
But surely nothing Macawellian.
and the last government too lest we forget.
McLaughlin said the subterranean fires “went on for weeks”.
Never mind the FACT that during these types of subterranean fires, an uncontrolled release of toxic leachate can occur into the ground, even to an otherwise dry site.
The dump doesn’t need band-aids or ad-hoc patches. It needs to either be moved or capped, before the entire water-table becomes contaminated.
Subterranean fires in the dump burn year round, 365 days, all day and night, whether they get out of control is the question.
So much for Accountability Transparency and Good Governance under the PPM. Imagine the public outcry and investigations if the UDP failed to follow the proper processes and pulled this sort of BS.
With the current government this is an exception. With the previous government it was “business as usual”.
CNS, please. We need the LOL and Troll buttons back.
True words Bulldozer Bob.
They did pull this BS too so forget the holier than thou BS.
Can anyone recall a government that didn’t award lucrative heavy equipment contracts?
cns please name the companies that benefited from these urgent non tendered deals..
Maybe he is talking about the dump, instead of talking about the spider Webb.
Please also include the names of all companies that had the prerequisite equipment at the time. Lets consider all relevant facts, not just those that may support a particular set of opinions.
One don’t have to look far, who was their large surporter that owns heavy equipment? Check the names through the traffic department, of who owns these excavators…FOI DEH they will tell you who they hired these excavators from!
Da an going to happen. National security concerns will trump spreading dirt around.
What is this Government thinking about when they are leasing things like garbage trucks and compactor . I think that the I.R .S and the F.B.I need to look into this . It cost more to lease, than purchase it .