June 26, 2013Dear Sir,Having followed the recent issues regarding trash collection and the need to pay overtime for the services, might I suggest an alternative that could spread the dollars a little further and help get more people working for both the short term and the long term.There seems to be an ongoing problem in that the equipment being used by Works & Engineering is too small and needs numerous return trips to unload. This is inefficient and costly both in down time and manpower. At the moment employees are being paid overtime to collect trash that has been building up so it’s even more costly than normal.My recommendation is that W&E should hire small independent truckers who are currently in need of work to supplement the trash collection.By pairing the trucks up with W&E employees (or other underutilised government employees) who will ride along to guide the drivers and do the actual collection the service can expand quickly and remain within normal working hours thus saving have to pay overtime. The overtime savings will of course go towards paying the truck drivers for leasing their services.This should clear up the backlog pretty fast. This can then become an ongoing programme to complement and support the W&E department so that the bottlenecks are smoothed out. It’s a win/win situation for everyone as the government/union members still participate, the local truckers pick up some guaranteed business and the trash collection becomes efficient and less costly to the Bermuda taxpayer - and above all Bermuda remains beautiful.DEREK AG JONESBoston, USA