$500m used-tyre clean-up project coming
MINISTER WITH responsibility for the environment portfolio of the Government Daryl Vaz disclosed that he has received support from Cabinet for an allocation of $500 million to rid the Corporate Area of used tyres.
Vaz, who was speaking at a Caribbean Research Policy Institute forum on the environment on Wednesday, shared that the main focus of the exercise would be Riverton City in St Andrew.
“We have a situation where we have got a private company that is going to take the shredded tyres, which means our cost is going to be subsidised,” Vaz said at the forum held at the Terra Nova Hotel in St Andrew.
“That one exercise [will be done] over 12 to 18 months to [shred and] clean up those tyres because you can’t truck them. Its cost is prohibitive. It has to be shredded and, obviously, we have to find an end user.”
The project is scheduled to come on stream in the next fiscal year after the Budget has been tabled and passed.
Riverton City, which houses the dump for Kingston and St Andrew, has been the subject of much environmental scrutiny, particularly when there is a fire.
Authorities and environmentalists often point fingers at the
proliferation of old tyres at the dump for the poor air quality in the area.
Vaz is counting on the project to address that issue.
Vaz said the administration was prepared to make a greater allocation to the environment ministry as the economy improves even as he acknowledged that the environment portfolio has suffered from both structural and financial impediments over the last three decades.