By Tahna Weston [email protected]
The National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) will be seeking to boost the productivity of its workers to ensure optimal work performance through the implementation of an evaluation system.
During a recent function, Minister of Health, Environment, and Social Transformation, Sir Molwyn Joseph, addressed the NSWMA staff regarding a number of issues which he deemed to be concerning, especially low and no productivity among some workers employed with the authority.
Among the issues highlighted were that some staff had been absent from work for over 100 days during the year for various reasons, including illness.
However, while Sir Molwyn said an evaluation system should have already been in place, he did not go into details why it had not. The minister guaranteed that this new system would not prove to be pointless.
“Let me have a little chat with the Solid Waste staff. And I’m very serious about this. We’re going to implement — it should have been already — a system of evaluation of performance for every member of Solid Waste staff. And none of you should entertain the thought that this is going to be just an exercise in futility.
“You are going to be required to meet the standards in your job description. And I’m quite aware that in Solid Waste, there are people who, half of a year, were either sick or something, some form of absence off the job. I’ve never seen this phenomenon until I’ve seen it in Solid Waste. How can you explain an employee consistently sick 120 days in one year?” Sir Molwyn queried.
“Serious days are ahead,” he warned the staff while pointing out that supervisors – who are well paid – are sometimes not doing what they were hired to do.
“They’re not supervising and they’re paid handsomely. They have government pick-up. They have government transportation. They have government phones in order to be able to go on the field and ensure that the work is done. And then when the work is not done, when the waste is not picked up, all you hear is ‘what is the minister doing?’,” Sir Molwyn said.
He also pointed to the fact that sanitation workers play a very important role in the public health system, thus their job requires serious professionalism especially when dealing with the public.
During the handing over of a fleet of equipment, including seven new garbage trucks, Sir Molwyn told the workers that collection of waste and proper waste management is an integral part of public health and thus they should not feel that their job is beneath any other profession.
“I want to appeal to every employee of Solid Waste … to accept my statement as a call to recalibrate the way we are doing things and to make a commitment to do better. Embrace this as an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the development of Antigua and Barbuda,” he said.
