Immigration Dept staff complain their work space is being polluted with water from Solid Waste toilets

Staff at the Immigration Department’s headquarters on the Sir George Walter
Highway say they are disgusted by the smell of sewage that is permeating
their offices and upset by management’s response to their complaints.
They claim that, last week, dirty water from the toilets upstairs – where the
National Solid Waste Management Authority is now located – flooded their
office, which still carries the odour of human waste.

They claim further that management has failed to do anything to remedy the
situation because the food fid not affect the space that managers occupy.
Employees allege that when they arrived at work on Tuesday, the section
where they work was flooded with water from the toilets, and the smell of
feces was in the air.

When a complaint was made to management, the staff allege they were simply
advised to get the cleaners to mop it up.

“But mopping it up didn’t make sense, because it keeps happening and scent
was still there,” one employee explains to REAL News.
The staff member claims that the supervisor was unable to work in her office
on that day as they all were forced to inhale the scent.

The Department’s headquarters are located in the old Sealy Building that,
until a few years ago, housed a call centre.

It is not clear whether the complaint was escalated to the attention of the
Central Board of Health or to the Public Works Department, which is
responsible for the maintenance of government buildings.

However, insiders claim that the Works Department has not been able to draw
down funds allocated in the Budget for quite a while now, as most of the
Ministry’s resources are transferred to National Housing.