Sunday September 9 is the date for the 2018 edition of the Sanitation Workers Appreciation Service. The service, now in its 16th year, is organized by Pastor Lincoln Hazel and the Apostolic Faith Church on St. Johnson’s Avenue at 10am. This year, the service will be held at the church. Last year, for the first time, the service was held on the grounds of Government House under the auspices of Governor General Sir Tapley Seaton. “We were looking to find a group of people that the church could adopt and celebrate,” Pastor Hazel said on a recent edition of the Solid Waste Management Corporation’s radio show “Talking Trash” on WINN FM 98.9.

The church service is not limited just to the workers of Solid Waste Management Corporation, but also Parks and Beaches, Environmental Health Department and included this year, the Nevis Solid Waste Management Corporation. “We must be able to say thanks. Thank you goes a long way and as citizens of St. Kitts and Nevis we should show gratitude to our health workers,” Pastor Hazel said. “Tourists who come to St. Kitts want to come back. You may think it’s because of our beaches and different sites, but it’s because of the cleanliness of this country where the sanitation workers work together to make this country healthy and beautiful,” he said. “We should say thank you to these guys every year and make them understand their importance in our society.”

Pastor Hazel, a former public health employee, said some employees from the various departments would be honored for exceptional service. Each department and entity will nominate persons for awards and the church will present them with gifts. “Everybody from the sanitation department gets a gift. But there will be special gifts for outstanding achievement,” he explained. He also asked for the business community to support the church in this initiative, while thanking all the supermarkets that have supported in the past. “All those who help, we are asking to help again,” he added. He assured that enough food will be available for all sanitation workers. “They can all bring their whole family to church and they all sit down and have lunch together,” the pastor added. “We have never had a time where we ran out of food.”