Management at the Solid Waste Management Corporation (SWMC) is doing it’s part to ensure that the elevator at the SWMC headquarters remains in tip top shape. Though installed last year, R.B.P. Lifts Limited, the company from Trinidad and Tobago that installed the elevator, has proposed a contract to management that will see to the monthly maintenance of the elevator. Carlton Robinson, Managing Director of RBP Lifts Ltd., visited the SWMC Headquarters recently along with his local representative Alexis Liburd to ensure that the elevator continued to function well and to meet with SWMC management officials on the proposal.

He told the SWMC Insider that a monthly maintenance of the elevator was important to ensure safety of its users and that the elevator continued to function well. “We feel it necessary because you are operating an elevator shaft that needs to be lubricated, to be maintained to ensure, for instance that all the door operations are operating as it ought to. For instance, people are using the elevator on a regular basis and the track could attack debris and as such the doors could be affected interfering with the operations of the elevator,” Mr. Robinson said.

The local rep Alexis Liburd will be the person who will be maintaining the elevator on a monthly basis and is also available on call in the event of an emergency. He praised the efficiency of the brand of the elevator—Kone, which uses smart technology on its elevators and has mechanisms in place to ensure the continued functioning of the elevator in the event of an emergency. “It’s a very smart lift…if anything goes wrong; if current goes, instead of sticking, (the elevator) comes right down and opens the door,” Liburd explained of the emergency system of the elevator.

In addition to the maintenance work, Mr. Liburd will provide training to staff on what to do in the event of an emergency while using the elevator. Training he said can also be provided by the Fire and Rescue Services, which conducts these trainings at other entities on the island that uses an elevator.

Meanwhile, SWMC General Manager Alphonso Bridgewater told the SWMC Insider that the elevator is very important to the operations at the SWMC headquarters, including the use of the conference facility on the second floor. “The elevator is pretty critical for us on several fronts, in the first instance we constructed a building that we wanted to be friendly to persons with various disabilities,” Mr. Bridgewater said. “On the second floor of this two story building we do have a conference facility and it facilitates the process of getting stuff from the ground level to the upper level and there is a general tendency for us at Solid Waste Management Corporation to put safety and security up front,” he added. The elevator has a capacity for four persons (400Kgs).