PRIME MINISTER Owen Arthur says he will accept blame for the island not yet having a waste transfer station.

In his contribution in Parliament last night, the Prime Minister also explained why his Government finally decided to put a landfill in Greenland. The Prime Minister told Parliament that during the 1997 Estimates meetings, it was calculated that an interim transfer station would have cost $1 million, so he took the decision not to spent that kind of money in a temporary facility but to wait and complete the permanent structure.

"I accept full responsibility for the transfer station not being built," he said.

The transfer station is holding up the opening of the controversial Greenland landfill. After much flak from the Opposition benches that the Government had not accepted expert advice in their decision to go to Greenland, Arthur offered an explanation. He said that there was a divide among the experts. Some favoured Greenland, others favoured other locations, so in the end, he said, the decision had to be taken by his Government where to go and they decided on the St. Andrew site.
Arthur added that solid waste management had only become an issue in Barbados because of the legacy of mismanagement of the Mangrove Pond Landfill, therefore anywhere the landfill was to be sited would become controversial. He said the management of landfills was no different, conceptually, from managing other projects - that is, to provide the resources needed to get the job done.

"In relation to Greenland, we are committing the resources, so much so, we spent over US$10 million so far."

But Opposition MP Branford Taitt said that Arthur was obfuscating the issue.

"The Prime Minister is talking about management but we are talking about the efficacy of placing a facility at Greenland. The hardheadedness and stubbornness of the Prime Minister will come back to haunt us," said Taitt.

What the BLP was also not talking about, Taitt said, was that the problems Thompson inherited were not "unconnected to the arrogant position an MP took, without informed knowledge," in the name of re-election.