Director of Prosource Limited, David Tomlinson has given the assurance that his company is qualified and well equipped to spearhead Government’s new waste management project.
While maintaining that Prosource Ltd – an arm of the Innotech Group – had legitimately been selected through the tendering process, Tomlinson said the company had been highly recommended by the Government of St Kitts after implementing a similar project there last year.
Furthermore, he pointed out that the company was currently working on similar projects in close to a dozen other countries.
There had been some outcry from Barbadians following the news that Prosource was awarded the contract, leading to Minister of Environment and National Beautification, Adrian Forde defending the decision.
The project, which is to be completed by the beginning of 2022, will see the Sanitation Service Authority’s garbage trucks being retrofitted with equipment to mechanically lift specialized carts used for garbage collection.
Each household in Barbados will be provided, free of charge, with a standardized Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) enabled 65-gallon roll-out cart for general waste and an 18-gallon bin to be used for commingled recycling.
In an interview with Barbados TODAY, Tomlinson insisted that his company had been granted no favours by the Barbados Government.
“It was totally clean and publicly procured. It was advertised in the public domain and we responded to that expression of interest and we went through that process.
“We completed the project in St Kitts and we are doing the project in Barbados and we have similar projects at variant stages of development in about 10 other territories across the Caribbean and that’s from Florida to Suriname,” Tomlinson said.
He also said reports claiming the project would be a fully automatic system and would lead to job losses were untrue.
Tomlinson said the technologically-driven waste management project was a semi-automated system and would incur no job losses.
“There seems to be a feeling that the system we are deploying is a fully automated system, but it’s not. It’s a semi-automated system. What we mean by that is that a fully automated system is where you only have a driver and the mechanical arms pick up the bins and throw it in the back of the cart, negating the need for anybody to be on the back of the truck, so I can understand people’s concerns with regards to job losses and that sort of stuff but there isn’t.
“A fully automated system isn’t suited to the environment in the Caribbean and certainly in Barbados because of the topography and because we have overhead cables and it wouldn’t work. Most importantly we also don’t want to displace anybody’s jobs or employment but what we want to try and do is improve the working conditions for the guys that do the work and create some efficiency in the collection system,” Tomlinson said.
He said he hoped there would eventually be a scheduled collection for general waste once a week for every household in Barbados and bi-weekly collection for recycling.
Dominic Tudor, the company’s Environmental Ambassador, said it was their goal to raise awareness in waste disposal among Barbadians.
She said as part of their efforts an anti-littering campaign would also be paired with the rollout of the project as well as several other initiatives and events.
(randybennett@barbadostoday.bb)
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