Street cleaners demonstrate in Sam Sharpe Square

A small group of employees from the National Solid Wates Management Authority (NSWMA) staged a peaceful demonstration in Sam Sharpe Square on Tuesday morning.

The workers who clean the streets in the town centre of Montego Bay were, demonstrating with placards about their working hours being cut from 112 hours weekly to 20 and 40 hours. The workers who are mainly contracted workers were given a memo, which has the head office address in Kingston, but were given instructions from their Montego Bay office that their working hours were cut. The workers were very disgruntled, and are asking for local Minister Desmond McKenzie’s intervention, or they will continue with their protest action.

A small group of police personnel was deployed to monitor their protest. A few hours after regional manager for the NSWMA Garnett Edmonson address the small gathering with the hope to quell the protesters.

‘We will be having a meeting shortly maybe early as Wednesday, April 21, to see what amicable solution we can come to, but as we all know its a Covid crisis and things is really hard on many companies, so as not to fire anyone we just keep all the workers and cut the hours,” Edmonson said.

Alan Lewin – News Reporter