Contractors have begun removing thousands of tons of scrap metal from the George Town landfill.

Two local companies that won a tender bid to remove the scrap are in the process of clearing 6,000 tons of baled scrap metal from Mount Trashmore.

With one shipment of scrap already gone, Director of Environmental Health Roydell Carter said the contractors began removing the second scrap metal shipment on Monday night.

The team is working from 6pm to 6am over the next several days, Mr. Carter said.

They removed 242 tons from the landfill overnight on Monday, with double the amount anticipated to be removed overnight on Tuesday.

“The scrap is being loaded on a barge, and we anticipate that all the scrap will be loaded and ready to be shipped by Friday,” said Ministry of Works Chief Officer Kearney Gomez.

During the day, operators are hard at work baling loose metal and crushing cars in preparation for shipment.

“Looking around, it’s really striking how much of the scrap that was here has now been taken away,” said Mr. Gomez.

“But this is only the first step in the plans we have for dealing with Cayman’s solid waste from now on.”

Under a contract signed earlier this year, Cardinal D. Ltd and Pan-Caribbean Energy Ltd. is paying $50 per ton – for a total of $300,000 which has been paid in advance to the government – to remove the scrap metal. They will then sell it to Hong Kong-based Hong Luen Metal Trading Company.

This is the second attempt to remove scrap metal debris from the landfill. In March 2007, Matrix, a joint Caymanian-Canadian company, signed a $1.2 million tender contract to remove the scrap, but ultimately paid only a quarter of that sum to the government for the scrap metal. That contract was cancelled in September 2007.

Last week, Premier McKeeva Bush paid almost $281,000 to 19 sub-contractors who had been hired by Matrix in 2007 to help with the scrap metal removal who had not paid for their work.