The local governments of the National District and other Santo Domingo municipalities as well as contracted companies have been using the same fleet of garbage trucks for more than ten years. The municipalities say this is preventing them from meeting the demand for garbage collection.
The Head of Operations at the Duquesa garbage dump, Saldivar Hernandez has said the problem is not the space to hold the garbage but a lack of trucks. They said that the population is increasing daily but they were still using the same trucks as in 2002 and 2003.
Hernandez believes that the mayors should be told of the need for more and new trucks to collect the garbage.
Duquesa dump receives between 3,000 and 4,000 tons of garbage a day from across Greater Santo Domingo when it should have between 6,000 or 7,000 tons a day.
Although some areas have containers, in others the garbage is left to pile up in the streets with mountains of garbage growing by the day in the National District and Santo Domingo North and East.