The entire fleet of refuse collection trucks of the Sanitation Service Authority (SSA) is now fitted with bin lifters.
General manager of the SSA, Janice Jones, told the Daily Nation that the 40 refuse collection trucks were fully retrofitted to allow the trucks to lift the newly distributed bins that were delivered to homes islandwide.
“It is a means of health and safety and protecting our workers from lifting those heavy bins. Now they just have to roll those bins to the trucks and they are tipped [into the bay].”
Jones said that there has been positive feedback from the workers, pointing out that during the Roll It On, Roll It Out launch in September they were very pleased with the move that started in St Lucy.
“Sometimes householders have the 50-gallon drums quite heavy and it was giving my staff back problems, so the Government decided that in the interest of health and safety they would introduce the bins.”
She said that workers now have the option of either taking out the garbage manually, if it is only one bag or so, or using the bin loader.
The project was a multimillion-dollar waste management project between the SSA and Prosource Limited, the waste management arm of Innotech Services Ltd.
The bin loader system is fully automated while the trucks carry radio frequency identification readers to track collection activity. (JB)