‘24-HOUR HOTLINE WORKING WELL’

THE Sanitation Service Authority (SSA) has been seeing benefits from having a 24-hour hotline in place.

SSA Public Relations Officer (PRO), Carl Padmore, said for the past four months the current hotline has been up and running. He indicated it serves many purposes, among these is to allow members of the public to make contact with personnel from the SSA after business hours.

“What the hotline has afforded us the opportunity to do is to interact with the public, even on weekends and on bank holidays where they may have concerns. It has been working well and persons have been calling in. We log each call that comes in, so we can basically tell you the areas in Barbados that might have had lots of bulk waste over a period of time. We are able to look to see if a truck did not go into an area and explain to the resident what might have occurred that your garbage in particular was not collected.”

Padmore further stated the “hotline complements the work of the Clean and Green Project that is going on” and this project falls directly under the Ministry of Environment and National Beautification. It also serves to complement the work of the SSA’s PRO who deals with complaints and queries and additionally, it provides an opportunity for SSA personnel to educate the public about some dos and don’ts.

“We also use that as a thing to educate persons on the correct ways to dispose of pampers and needles and even green waste. The hotline is there in addition to our Facebook page to have that interaction with the members of public. It is a good link between the staff at operations and the public as well, so we compliment the work being done by the supervisors and superintendents which falls under the operation.” (MG)