A call for more Barbudans to return home to improve clean up efforts

The clean-up of Codrington has slowed to a crawl as National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) contractors await the return of the people who had to be evacuated from Barbuda after hurricane Irma last month.
OBSERVER media visited the sister isle this week and spoke to some of the heavy equipment contractors.
One truck operator, Vaughn Francis says the public spaces have been cleared but, workers are not allowed to go into the homes where clean up is need. He says the team needs more people to return so that more can be done.
“It isn’t going fast enough. We started in the morning for 6 o’clock, we did a few and when it hit lunchtime, the people take  a break. So, we just got to wait for them because we are not allowed to go into the yard. So, whatever they put out, we take up. If it was a case we could go into the yard and tear down the buildings, we could have moved a little faster,” he said.
Barbudans are required to determine what they can salvage before Solid Waste can simply gut their properties.
This means that the clean-up effort is reliant on Barbudans actually being present on the sister isle. However, residents say they are very few Barbudans on the sister isle and even fewer sleep over.
One woman, Frances Beazer says as a start, she believes more information must be given to Barbudans in Antigua about what accommodations are available in Barbuda. Beazer says this is the only way anyone will have the confidence to return and more importantly, to stay overnight.
She says Barbudans are not going to give up living in Antigua where there is certainty, to return to uncertainty in Barbuda.