Truck trouble fuels more garbage pick-up delays
(CNS): Officials from the Department of Environmental Health have apologized yet again for delays in garbage pick-ups as a result of equipment trouble. The DEH said in a short release that their customers could expect delays after a series of mechanical failures in some of the trucks earlier this week. Department of Vehicle and Equipment Services (DVES) mechanics fixed the equipment quickly, but the vehicle downtime still resulted in setting back the rubbish collections, the officials said.
The DEH said the areas affected include homes largely around Prospect but that garbage had previously gone uncollected in sections of West Bay and other parts of George Town.
The department offered its usual apologies and urged people who continue to experience rubbish collection delays to contact the office on 949-6696 or email dehcustomerservice@gov.ky
Category: Environmental Health, Health
Why can’t you just say incompetence fuels more trouble?
Have you seen them driving these? No wonder they are broken.
it’s the civil service…what do you expect?
the perfect representation of the caymanian workforce
Having worked as a fleet manager I’d guess a fair bit of this is deliberate. Simple logic – as CIG employees their wages are guaranteed and if the trucks don’t work they’ll still get paid so they break them.
There’s a very easy answer to this – privatise the garbage collection. That’s what they’ve done in most of the UK and according to my friends there it works very well.
How would that solve the problem? What can a private company do legally that the CIG is unable to do?
3:30 Only pay them if the work gets done? Have you never heard of ‘zero hours’ contracts? All perfectly legal if they’re drafted correctly. Effectively the staff would be employed on an hourly basis in the same way that people like security guards are. Instead of getting a fixed and guaranteed wage they’d be paid the appropriate rate for hours worked.
zero hour contracts are horrible. Something w do no want in Cayman.
2:41, If it is good enough for all the security guards in Cayman then it is good enough for the trash collectors.
The Gravy Train Must End. Enough is Enough.
That’s culturally insensitive.
@3:30 Fire people for a start. No jobs for life in the private sector. The harsh reality is that a private garbage collector would be tied a contract so they, and their employees, would have to deliver or they wouldn’t get paid.
And what the OP says is correct. Where my family comes from in the UK you can pretty much set your watch by the collections even though some of the trucks the contractor is using are well over ten years old.
4:23 Check out a previous story on this, ‘Garbage workers on overtime to catch up.’ Even simpler logic – break the trucks, sit around all day getting paid for doing nothing while they’re being fixed then cash in on the overtime required to catch up. Vehicles like this don’t just break down, if it’s not being done deliberately it’s being caused by a failure to conduct basic checks and routine maintenance.
Your completely right about them messing up the trucks.
Also hear that government parts are going into a private company equipment.
Can’t they employ some Jamaican/Phillipino mechanics, who know what they are doing?.
And fire the government mechanics who can’t do their job. oh sorry, i forgot, no one gets fired from the government for incompetence.
You idiot, its the Jamaican drivers, destroying the trucks !!
6.49am Firstly you must be Caymanian, hurling insults in your reply. Secondly are you up every morning at 5.00am to observe the trucks. I am as I go jogging then, and I can assure you I see the trucks on their rounds every week in George Town, and they are all driven in a safe and sensible manner.
Maybe you should encourage some of your hundreds of unemployed fellow citizens to get up in the morning and do this job.
Lastly, please do not forget the historic performance from the DVDL examiner, who of course despite his best efforts, in the true tradition of the Civil Service did not lose his job.
Isn’t it high time we invested in spare trucks to cover for those that break down?
No satirony, invest in a full scale maintenance program. In the US and Canada these trucks last 10 years or more while in Cayman we are lucky to get 3 years out of them. At nearly a million a truck surely we can spend money on training people to maintain the trucks properly.
You must have a full scale maintenance program for the relatively new trucks. Enough is enough. The CIG can’t do the job. PRIVATISE NOW.
Can we privatize the whole CIG? We are being scammed!
Welcome to Cayman, Your Majesty.
jon-jon…the rubbish minister.
joke-joke…