Irregular Collection Is Now the Number One Public Complaint in Every Parish – Neita-Garvey

Jamaicans will pay over $18 billion for garbage collection and disposal across the next two financial years, yet irregular solid waste collection has become the single most common complaint from citizens in every parish across the island, Opposition Spokesperson on Local Government and Participatory Democracy Natalie Neita-Garvey warned during her sectoral contribution in Parliament on Wednesday.

MP Neita-Garvey, who has represented North Central St Catherine for nineteen years and has followed local government service delivery closely throughout that time, cited the 2026/27 Estimates of Expenditure, which allocate $8.5 billion to solid waste management this financial year, following $9.7 billion in the previous year. She warned that the system is delivering worse service for greater public expenditure, and that repeated audits have raised fundamental management questions that have not been answered to Parliament or the public.

“Citizens do not conduct their evaluations of local government in conference rooms. They conduct them in their communities, in their lived experience, every single day. When the bin is not collected for weeks, when verges rot and disease risk grows, and the bill to the taxpayer keeps climbing, that is not a management challenge. That is a management failure. And it demands accountability, not further silence.” declared Natalie Neita-Garvey, MP, Opposition Spokesperson on Local Government and Participatory Democracy

Neita-Garvey also raised concern about the dismissal of professional staff at the National Waste Management Authority on what she described as spurious grounds, with tens of millions of dollars in severance costs borne by taxpayers and no public explanation provided. She noted that the NSWMA has not been structured in compliance with its own governing Act and does not function as the regulatory body the legislation requires.

She called on the Minister of Local Government to table a full management and performance audit of the NSWMA in Parliament, explain every senior staff dismissal and its cost to taxpayers, and present a concrete service improvement plan with measurable targets and published timelines.