Government is committed to ensuring that the ash spread across the length and breadth of Barbados is removed.
Minister of Housing, Lands and Maintenance, Dr William Duguid, gave that assurance during this morning’s official launch of the National Cleanup Programme, which is aimed at ridding Barbados of the ash dumped on the island following several eruptions of the La Soufriere Volcano in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
“The Government has undertaken a major cleanup programme and we’ve not only brought into use all of the government equipment from MTW but also as many as the private sector people as we could get to assist us in the cleanup of the road programme. It is a massive programme you would appreciate, but we have to get that dust under control because if we don’t get the roads under control as people drive along the roads they will continue to drive up the dust,” Dr Duguid told members of the media.
“We will be working at this until we can get Barbados clean but obviously, we don’t know how much more ash we are going to get and nobody can tell us when more ash will come, when there will be more eruptions and based on what the wind patterns will be if we are going to get it. Bit by bit we are working on it but it will take us time.”
The island has been affected by ashfall for the past four days and Prime Minister Mia Mottley announced over the weekend that there would be a national cleanup.
Minister Duguid said particular attention was being paid to the cleaning of government buildings, their photovoltaic panels as well as drains.
He said it was especially important drains were properly cleaned or it could lead to flooding during the rainy season.
Dr Duguid said the latest technology was being used in the cleanup process.
“The second part of our programme is the cleanup of all of the government buildings and we are doing not only the car parks and the buildings but we also have to do the roofs and the buildings themselves on the outside and the inside. So what we’ve done here today is we have been employing the use of drone technology to be able to access the roofs of the buildings. As you are aware, clearly a lot of weight of the ash is on the roofs so we’re using the drone technology to access the roofs of as many of the government buildings as possible,” he pointed out.
“It is a massive cleanup, nobody knows when it will end but as the national coordinator for the cleanup of Barbados we are bringing all the technology together using as many resources as we can to be able to hit this problem head-on.
“As the rains come, if we don’t have the integrity of those drains then we are going to suffer a lot of flooding all throughout the country, so those drains are very, very important. We are trying to keep as much ash out of the drains as possible and I would ask everybody as well to make sure that very little ash goes into the drains because it will cause significant problems with flooding as we move into the rainy season,” Dr Duguid added.
He said the National Housing Corporation (NHC) would also soon be starting a cleanup programme for its estates.
The minister admitted that Government had met some challenges with the procurement of protective equipment for those persons involved in the clean up.
The programme began in Wildey, St Michael, but will eventually be spreading to other districts.
Additionally, Dr Duguid said the Sanitation Service Authority (SSA) would be responsible for collecting the bags of ash across the island.
He explained while SSA compactors could not process the ash, the SSA would be sending out open back trucks to pick up bagged ash. (RB)
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