Garbage Gets – By Sharon N. Simon
Garbage Gets Collected Nswma
An anonymous letter recently submitted to Observer AM has raised serious allegations about working conditions inside the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), describing a workplace defined by fear, inadequate safety protections, and management failures that the authors say have gone unaddressed for years.
The letter — signed “those who remain anonymous, because in this institution, anonymity is the last protection left for us” — arrived without a name but not without specificity. Its authors describe themselves as workers who “show up every day so your garbage disappears” — people whose bodies carry, in their words, “the weight of this country’s refuse so that yours remains clean.”
A copy of the letter was provided to the Authority’s General Manager, Indira James-Henry, and Board Chairman Danley Philip, ahead of publication.
The claims in this report therefore remain unverified by the NSWMA and represent the assertions of the letter’s authors alone.
Former Chief Health Inspector Lionel Michael, responding after the letter was read on air, described the allegations as serious enough to demand attention at the highest level of the organisation. He urged workers to approach the General Manager directly and, if necessary, write formally to the Board’s Chairman requesting an audience.
“The matters raised in the letter seem to be very serious and have implications for the National Management of Waste in Antigua and Barbuda,” Michael said. “The National Solid Waste Management Authority is too important an organisation for this kind of conflict and confusion to be taking place.”
Michael also called on the Authority to commission an independent assessment of indoor environmental quality at its headquarters, and to ensure workers are adequately protected both at the landfill and in the office — a direct echo of the letter’s most urgent claims.
Workers allege they have been sent to respond to landfill fires without proper protective equipment, and that collection staff are routinely reassigned to landfill duties when operational planning breaks down.
Beyond safety, the letter describes neglected facilities, unmaintained machinery, and a practice of threatening staff with personal financial responsibility when equipment fails due to ordinary wear.
One department, the authors allege, is overseen by an individual who is rarely present on site, but is said to draw a monthly salary of approximately EC $15,000. However, Observer media could not independently verify this claim.
Beneath it all, the authors say, is a culture of enforced silence — where speaking up invites retaliation rather than resolution, and where Human Resources has long since chosen its allegiance. The Authority has moved through several general managers without meaningful change, they wrote, adding: “The faces change. The dysfunction does not.”
What they are asking for, they insist, is not extraordinary: proper safety equipment, maintained machinery, a place to rest, protection from retaliation, and an HR function that serves staff as fairly as it serves management.
“These are the people who keep this country clean,” the letter concludes. “They deserve, at the absolute minimum, a workplace that does not treat them as the waste they were hired to manage.”
Copies of the letter were provided to the General Manager and Board Chairman ahead of publication, however neither had responded up to press time.
