Woman angered by scrap salvager’s behaviour
A woman has been left fuming after she was accused of claim-jumping by a squatter at the Airport Dump.Smith’s resident Trena Riley said she was trying to take away junk from the facility on December 16 when a man challenged her.“A man came along and told me I was in his area and the item in my hands was his,” Ms Riley said. “He then took the item out of my hand.”She had found a discarded satellite dish holder, and was dismantling it to load into her car.“I told him the property belongs to Government,” Ms Riley said. “I told him if it’s his, he should have removed it from the dump.”According to Ms Riley, a member of staff told her the man had “claimed” that section of the dump. She said she was advised that “it was between us to work out the dispute”.Returning to the facility ten days later, Ms Riley found the man, a Caribbean national, still at the airport dump and stockpiling material in shipping containers.Calling it “pure exploitation”, she asked: “How is this illegal hustle helping Bermuda and its people? It also raises the question if he is in violation of his visa or work permit.”According to a Public Works spokesman, the individual in question had been gathering scrap metal.“The man has been stopped from carrying out this operation, which includes the salvaging of scrap metal, and he is no longer at the airport dump,” the spokesman said.The Department of Airport Operations recently installed an access gate at the public entrance to LF Wade International Airport, to deal with the repeated dumping of trash after hours outside the landfill site.