Third District Representative Julian Fraser has insisted that the long-awaited scrubber device for the Pockwood Pond based incinerator is nowhere closer on the horizon for beleaguered residents of that area and said he did not expect it to get fixed.
This is despite recurring claims by Health Minister, Carvin Malone, that the incinerator will be fixed and statements assuring that something was being done about the issue.
“I said, ‘minister, you will be talking about the incinerator when you leave office because it’s not going to happen’. He didn’t believe me,” Fraser said at a press conference yesterday.
Malone previously noted that the device — whose function is to filter the noxious fumes being emitted from the government’s incinerator in Pockwood Pond — would be installed by the end of March 2020.
He told residents at the time that he was given the assurance by the manufacturers of the scrubber device, Consutech that “the scrubber is going to come in the first quarter of 2020″.
But this never came to fruition, despite Malone’s claims that part payment was made for the device years ago.
Fraser said when Malone first got elected into office, he was all excited like any new minister and had an agenda to get things done, one of which was to get the outstanding scrubber for the non-functioning incinerator.
Fraser related that Malone told him that he went to Virginia to speak with representatives of the company who said they were building the scrubber.
But the opposition legislator noted that it was Premier Andrew
Fahie who ultimately brought the disappointing news about the scrubber to the fore.
“It’s the Premier who got up afterwards and said the company went defunct, bankrupt, out of business. The scrubber isn’t coming,” Fraser stated.
According to Fraser, the issue with the incinerator takes more than a minister simply talking about the pandemic to get it fixed.
“When you talk about getting it fixed, it means the minister has to get himself down on the ground and get dirty and into the business of making sure that those kinds of things get done,” Fraser argued.