Stop the nastiness

On Wednesday last week, 20 full truckloads of bulk waste were removed from the market at Mucurapo Street in San Fernando. Spurring this massive clean-up were concerns that a vendor might have been exposed to a covid19 patient who died.

Along with general cleaning, unwanted stalls that were broken or rotting were demolished and removed. Under the guidance of the sanitation foreman at the San Fernando City Corporation, Gerard Ramharack, the market was subject to "a general washing, baiting and deodorising."

While the move was commendable and necessary, it's also obvious that it was overdue and it took a pandemic to initiate action that should be part of normal sanitation procedures in a space in which produce is sold.

In Port of Spain over the last two weeks, the capital city's corporation spent $150,000 to wash the streets and the Central Market. Port of Spain Mayor Joel Martinez hoped that the city would remain clean.

"We have to stop the nastiness," he said.

The private sector has delivered its own lessons in re-engineering systems from normal to needed. Angostura retooled its operations to mass-produce hand sanitiser for frontline responders. Carib Brewery produced its own sanitising product. In his hope to maintain a clean city, Martinez is hoping to reverse entrenched habits that ignore visible waste bins in favour of a nearby drain.

A national lesson in putting things where they belong, specifically regarding our rubbish, is needed. The Port of Spain City Corporation has its own challenges with people beyond their capacity to litter in managing a considerable population of indigents in the city. The corporation is still wrestling with the challenges of the homeless in Port of Spain, who have nowhere to "#stayathome."

The Centre for Socially Displaced Persons at Riverside Plaza is being sanitised daily, but cannot accommodate an additional influx of homeless people, and the issue is further complicated by the very vocal insistence of some hard-line vagrants to live on the sidewalk.

The most recent plan by the Social Development Ministry, working alongside the city corporation and the Defence Force, to construct additional communal bathrooms and provide more sleeping accommodations at the carpark is a welcome one.

Managing that number of destitute citizens in one space, with an attitude that might be described as ruggedly individualistic, seems an impossible task, requiring significant wrangling skills. That undertaking is hardly the only one facing local government administrators who must now meet the challenge of completely rethinking the administration of their slice of these islands with inventiveness and speed.

Collaboration and comparison of emerging best practices might be a way forward for the councillors of local government, who represent the practical implementation of the nation's evolving covid19 policies.