Short term solutions touted for Provo Dump problems

By Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

#TurksandCaicos, November 17, 2022 – After another incident with smoke in the Providenciales dump last Thursday morning MP and Chair of the Solid waste task force Kyle Knowles said management challenges have played a part in the constant issues arising at the waste site.

Knowles, a resident and member of parliament for the Wheeland district, was speaking on First Edition on Radio Turks and Caicos with hosts Cheryl and Zhavargo, the same day, November 10.

“What I realised going in is that when you inherit problems sometimes you don’t understand the depth of the problem or how great of a problem that you have,” he said.

While maintaining that they were still working toward a resolve, he admitted serious shortfalls.

“You’ll find that the dump site, over the last few years, there was no management, the management was non-existent.  Even up to the most- I would even call it catastrophic – incident that we had, the fire with the tires and what not; that in itself really helped to put things in perspective.”

Only days later, similar regrets on the progress in solid waste management, would be shared by the now, former minister of health, Jamell Robinson.  Robinson has been shuffled to the Ministry of Physical Planning and Infrastructure Development.  He said, “I probably would have pushed for getting the interim solution, in terms of the tender coming out for the Providenciales waste management site sooner because unfortunately the processes with the government and CDB took a lot longer than we would have hoped.  Even though we would have set up the Solid Waste Management task force a year ago we’re now getting to a point where the work is about to begin.”

Leading the Task Force and charged with working with the Caribbean Development Bank on a project which was approved some six years ago in 2016, Knowles said the Government was now prepared to introduce short term immediate fixes from machinery to security, to tackle the urgent issue.

In terms of the long term fixes, including the Caribbean Development Bank study and consultancy on solid waste management across the Turks and Caicos, Kyle Knowles said that while the CDB had very stringent rules for the projects it funded and ensuring compliance  with those rules had taken time, the overall process was still progressing favourably.

In narrowly winning the district seat in February 2021, Knowles campaigned heavily on finding and resolving the years old dump or Providenciales Landfill issue for residents of the area.