DEH still struggling with garbage collection

| 04/07/2019 | 75 Comments
Cayman News Service
Garbage skip in George Town Thursday, 4 July

(CNS): Officials from the Department of Environmental Health said that staff shortages are causing the latest garbage collection problems. As rubbish was piling up in and around George Town this week, the department said there had been delays in residential garbage collection services due to “a temporary shortage of staff at the start of the week”. Management is working to resume collection in affected areas and has made changes to this week’s schedule.

Uncollected areas included:

  • Eastern Ave from the junction of Shedden Rd to Courts Rd,
  • Swamp,
  • South Church St,
  • Marina Drive,
  • Newlands,
  • Central Town,
  • Windsor Park,
  • Banana Walk,
  • Randyke Gardens,
  • Halfway Pond,
  • Bobby Thompson Way to Oak Mill St,
  • Mary St,
  • Rock Hole,
  • IMP to Morningside Dr,
  • College Cl. to Windward Dr.

All areas were scheduled to receive garbage pick-up Thursday. 

Officials said that garbage pick-up will take place on Friday in communities where it is usually collected on Wednesdays and Thursdays. But this will have a knock-on effect, which means communities scheduled for Friday pick-up will now be collected Saturday.

Once again the DEH issued apologies to residents in the affected areas and said it would make the collections as soon as possible.

Residents with specific issues with their garbage are asked to call the office on 949-6696 or email dehcustomerservice@gov.ky

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Category: Environmental Health, Health

Comments (75)

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  1. Anonymous says:

    Ideally the politicians heading the various Ministries should not get involved in the administrative matters of the public service, and neither should they have to! The senior civil servants, i.e, Chief Officers (CO) and Heads of Departments (HoD) are the ultimate responsible parties. If they can’t get their department staff to do their jobs and be accountable accordingly, then the axe should fall on the COs and the Heads of Departments (HoD)!

    Fact is, in Cayman Island Government most COs and HoDs are cut from the same cloth – mostly incompetent, promoted above their abilities, ego-filled because of their posts and greedy for their big monthly salaries! It doesn’t help that most of the politicians overseeing them fit the same bill!!

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    • Anonymous says:

      Absolute nonsense 12:58. When a major administrative system is totally out of control, as is garbage collection on Grand Cayman for many years, the Minister gets involved. Who the hell do you think ultimately approves the budgets? THE MINISTER.

      The lack of garbage collection and the Dump are major ongoing crises and demand Ministerial action now or the Minister should resign as he cannot do the job he was elected to do.

      The Minister is accountable for major administrative matters.

  2. Can roll my eyes enough... says:

    insert slow clap here…. and let’s get that Dart Tower and Port built asap, cuz…. Priorities!

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    • Anonymous says:

      Can you even imagine the trash issues from a 80 story building? We will be lucky if raw sewage isn’t running down the street! ‘Oy….

  3. Anonymous says:

    We need to all understand that “our garbage is our garbage” and unless we take responsibility for the reduction of our waste NO public or private sector army will solve Cayman’s garbage crises.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Sounds like victim shaming. It is not unreasonable or irresponsible to expect regular garbage pickup.

  4. Anonymous says:

    DEH couldn’t organise a p*** up in a brewery.

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  5. Anonymous says:

    So, they have one job, and they can’t get that right…only in Cayman.

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  6. Anonymous says:

    We also need to ask, what are we as the garbage producers doing? Is our household now recycling. It cuts your “garbage” at least in half.

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  7. Anonymous says:

    Once more DoEH. Get out of the comercial garbage collection business. That is the renting and clearing of skips/dumpsters and grabber truck services. Leave this to the private sector where there are already a few competent companies offering these services. Sell off the front loader trucks and skips. Move staff on the household collection business. Let some others go work in the private sector.

  8. Anonymous says:

    This is why people, senior ex pats are brought in from the U.K. for senior positions on this island. It’s nothing to do with not allowing Caymanians the chance of these jobs. It’s realising that Caymanians are not up to it. Just look at the problems you are encountering. Simple things like garbage collection, let alone all the other problems that are not sorted here……all Caymanian controlled! You all admit on posting how useless and incompetent your Government is. You are being contradictory then by criticising ex pats that are brought in to try and run the show as it should be. I have encountered over the years how lazy some Caymanians are. For example, the old Holiday Inn where we often lunched on a Sunday. We waited half hour to even have our orders taken whilst a group of you congregated just gossiping and laughing. Thankfully, the hospitality employers have realised this and now employ mainly from overseas who actually want to work. Just look at the bars…..mainly all overseas staff. What does that tell you? You need to get off your backside, get some education, stop whinging and blaming everyone else and then maybe you will be eligible for these positions.

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    • Anonymous says:

      I guess you havent heard we have a world class civil service. How can you fix a problem if you cant admit you have one!

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    • Anonymous says:

      Or maybe it’s just that people who move for work know that they don’t have any business doing anything else, or even thinking about doing anything else, because they uprooted in order TO WORK. We LIVE here, we are FROM here, we have large families, pastimes, spatial and emotional memories, things we’d much, MUCH rather be doing with our increasingly small amount of leisure time thanks to your lot. We resent your forcing us to work harder to keep up with YOU, to keep OUR jobs in OUR own country. If I move somewhere else, I’ll behave just like you and sneer at the locals too. It’ll be my right, just as it’ll be theirs to say ‘try hards, why don’t they have a bowl of ramen and chill the F out’.

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    • Anonymous says:

      There was a local at kaibo for the longest time, you’d get attention once every 2 hours.

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    • Word Up! says:

      Lol. Oh please. Look, every country has its lazy and/or incompetent citizens. What struck me in your diatribe was the word “maybe” –

      You wrote:

      “You need to get off your backside, get some education, stop whinging and blaming everyone else and then maybe you will be eligible for these positions.”

      So, maybe we’ll be allowed to do what expats are brought in to do, maybe, just maybe Perhaps so, I don’t know, maybe, maybe not. 🤷🏾‍♂️

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    • Anonymous says:

      Ummm, there have been (former) expats in charge of this shitshow for more than a year.

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      • Anonymous says:

        Yes 3:29, but ultimately the Minister is responsible for solving this problem and he is 100% Caymanian. He should deal with the problem now or resign.

        This problem has been going on far too long and I am fed up paying Strata Fees for garbage collection which is regularly uncertain. At Xmas / New Year time for the past 6 or 7 years. garbage collection ceases during this period though we all pay for the service. We never get a refund for a service not delivered. Impossible. We tried.

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        • Anonymous says:

          The civil servants blame the politicians, the politicians blame the civil servants, the public blames Caymanians, then realizing that it is expats responsible blames the politicians, who will blame the civil servants and so it will go on and on until there is actually some accountability.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Haven’t you got the memo? The Chief Officer in the Ministry of Health, Environment Housing and Culture is originally from Canada? Does this not debunk your platitudinous anti Caymanian diatribe?…..KMT GSYM

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      • Anonymous says:

        But the Chief Officer reports directly to the Minister who is 100% Caymanian.

        He has the political power to do something but does nothing.

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  9. Anon says:

    Fact – the garbage truck came down South Church St at 2.50am this morning.

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  10. Anonymous says:

    Maybe offer them some over time pay and they’ll be willing to put in the extra collection time.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Mate, you’ve got to be joking

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      • George Towner says:

        I agree with him. It starts at the top. How they treat and manage their staff. Its not the collectors fault.

        Management simply need to hire more staff and provide perks for the nasty job; especially, those who work hardest.

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        • Anonymous says:

          $20 an hour isn’t enough of a perk?! It’s a job, something you do to afford perks in your life. Like food and a home.

          Also, I agree, horrible management does nothing to motivate the workers and they should be fired as well. We’ve all worked for people who think they do everything but really they are glorified hall monitors…. Only difference is, not collecting our garbage isn’t sticking it to the man, it’s sticking it to us!

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    • Anonymous says:

      Thats why they are calling in sick so they can get ovetime pay

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  11. Anonymous says:

    This is a very good illustration how globalists are fixing climate change with your carbon tax money.

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  12. Jotnar says:

    Temporary shortage of staff i.e. absenteeism or vacation, both of which will be “fixed” by paying overtime to deal with the backlog. Haven’t we been here before?

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    • Ironside says:

      Just about every time there’s a public holiday on Monday it seems. Then even more staff don’t show up to work after another holiday Monday and you get what we got here, failure to collect garbage! (my apologies to Cool Hand Luke writers).

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  13. Anonymous says:

    If recycling was enforced then you wouldn’t have as much garbage to collect.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Junk, you can buy you’re own stackable recycling buckets from them or get your strata to up the amount by a little for a community set of skips for them to collect. They collect it all. Just in case you didn’t know they did that!

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    • Anonymous says:

      And where on the island is the re-cycling plant? It ALL goes on the dump.There is no re-cycling plant or program here on Cayman.

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  14. Anonymous says:

    CIG can’t get their shit together to pick up garbage. Let that sink in for a second. The fifth largest financial center in the world and we can’t pick up our garbage. We put forth our island as “the jewel of the Caribbean, yet we can’t pick up our own garbage.

    We have unfinished schools and schools not fit for purpose, of which millions and millions of dollars have been spent. Our children are graduating high school without being able to read and write at a 3rd grade level. How are they supposed to compete with students from private schools?

    The highest point on this island is the garbage dump. You can see it and smell it. It’s big enough to be a tourist attraction.

    Yet, we are supposed to trust this government with the largest project that this country has ever considered and which may have devastating consequences for our environment and stay-over tourism, but CIG can’t get their act together enough to pick up garbage.

    Cayman we should be ashamed of ourselves. We can and should be doing better.

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  15. Anonymous says:

    A miser pays twice. Everybody knows that.

    Treat garbage collectors as they are treated in a civilized world and you would have no problems with collections. Adequate Compensation commensurate with hazards of the job, benefits and other perks such as life and LT disability insurance, extended vacations are a must. Simple like that.

    You treat them like $hit, you get $hit in return. 😷

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  16. Anonymous says:

    Question? …Who’s going to collect the garbage from a 50 story sky scraper?

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    • Anonymous says:

      Dart plans to build a conveyer belt for the garbage from the 50 storey building directly to Mount Trashmore. Everything will be fine, just trust in Dart.

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  17. Anonymous says:

    Why are they short of staff? I thought they made an agreement with HMPS to get the inmates to help collect the garbage.

    Stop the excuses and fix the problem.

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  18. Anonymous says:

    All brought to you by a Government that still insists that there are less than 65,000 people here, when that is obviously not the case. With that level of incompetence would we really expect them to have infrastructure to cater to the actual population?

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  19. Anonymous says:

    Fix the damn dump DEH!

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  20. Anonymous says:

    There comes a time when you need to stop apologizing and start accepting the fact that you are simply incompetent. The problem with the CIG is that there is no accountability.

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    • Anonymous says:

      PRIVATISE NOW. The CIG cannot do the job and they have consistently proven this for the past 5 years.

      In the U.S. Canada and the U.K. garbage collection is private so why not on Grand Cayman? There is no other solution.

      And we want to build a 50 storey building when we cannot even figure out how to undertake basic garbage collection?

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      • Anonymous says:

        Absolutely agree. It’s the obvious way. No need for Govt to be involved in garbage collection. Politicians would need the b*lls to get rid of a large number of the present lazy workers. And they don’t have them.

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      • Anonymous says:

        Garbage collection is not privately run everywhere in the US. Where did you pull that from?

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        • Anonymous says:

          12:49, Not sure where you have been living in the U.S. but having lived in Florida, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania and Washington State the garbage collection was always privatized.

      • Anonymous says:

        Managed competition is being used in some U.S. cities; privatisation percentage is no more than 50%. Some cities, such as Plano, TX (which has about our population) have kept it public, however they employ a strategy of bonus sharing when employees save money.
        https://www.waste360.com/collection-and-transfer/private-benjamins-debate-over-privatizing-waste-collection

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        • Anonymous says:

          If you carefully read the link you provided, you would see that the 50% figure you refer to is the figure for privatization from 25 years ago. It is certainly far higher in America now.

          Reread the article bearing in mind that the underlying assumption is that both public and the private sector can provide the service equally. Here in Cayman the CIG CANNOT provide the service effectively and efficiently.

          PRIVATISE Cayman garbage collection now. End the stupid charade.

          We need regular garbage pick up now. No more debating whether the CIG can do the job. They can’t.

    • Anonymous says:

      We cannot continue at current rates of population growth and not figure out how to have basic garbage collection.

      50 storey buildings and over 100,000 people here. ????? One cannot be serious.

      The quality of life is going to drop for everyone except the billionaires.

      Time for a Green Party in Cayman before the old boys and girls in political power sell the rest of the population out for the almighty dollar.

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  21. Anonymous says:

    more civil service nonsense…..

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  22. Anonymous says:

    Our wise leaders want to build a skyscraper in the middle of Cayman and invite thousands of more people to come here. My question is, will our great leaders build a second mount trashmoore to accomodate the influx of people and more garbage being generated?

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  23. Anonymous says:

    Short staffed? Pay more for people to do these thankless but highly necessary jobs! It’s starting to stink outside, garbage been overflowing since last week… The chickens are loving it though I guess lol.

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  24. Anonymous says:

    In every country there are basic certain things a government has to get right to justify staying in office and before it turns its attention to big swanky eye-catching projects like the port. One of those is garbage collection, which really can’t be that difficult to fix. A country that can’t even pick up rubbish on time is a third world country. Our government’s unending Keystone Cops-style incompetence with this is excruciatingly embarrassing, and in any sensible country, inexcusable. The minister is manifestly out of his depth in terms of both intellect and overall competence. His head should roll and he should never hold public office again.

    Mr Premier, please turn your attention away from your international globe-trotting back towards home and GET A GRIP. I thought your party claims that it’s competent at this sort of thing. It’s clearly not

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    • Anonymous says:

      One would think it would not be that difficult to fix garbage collection but on Grand Cayman it is incredibly difficult to fix, but building a $300 million port and 50 storey building is easy.

      Too bad about the airport though. That is difficult with drainage and A/C problems.

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  25. Anonymous says:

    How many more times do we get apologies before someone fixed the problem??!

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    • Anonymous says:

      It’s Cayman, so I think until it’s privatized.

      • Anonymous says:

        Privatisation is not the solution to our wutlessness!

        The solution is with the minds of the persons producing this garbage.

        Can we all pledge to change our destructive habits every day for one month?

        We may just shock ourselves at the difference this could make🙏🏼

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