A late blog update following a marathon council sitting tonight!The Courier this morning covered the on-going waste management problems over public holiday arrangements and my comments about them. Click on headline to view the article - I was also interviewed on Radio Tay about the issue today.
Whilst I appreciate that there is an industrial dispute that is causing the City Council difficulty in undertaking normal refuse collections on a public holiday, I was unhappy with the way this problem was managed at the April public holiday.
People with a Monday collection were simply missed out completely that week – around 100 streets in the West End were affected and I felt that simply leaving households without a bin collection for a fortnight was unacceptable.
In discussion with the Depute Chief Executive of the City Council and with the Head of Waste Management, I made the suggestion that a better way to tackle the problem would be to collect refuse a day late – a far fairer way to tackle the issue. However, that’s not the way the matter was tackled although I was advised that the same households who were affected at the April public holiday would not be left without a whole week’s collection if the industrial dispute was unresolved by the start of May.
The Council now intends to tackle the issue at the next public holiday by dealing with Monday’s collection a day late and this time miss out the Tuesday collection entirely. This affects around 90 streets in the West End and I have been in correspondence with the department about my concerns about this approach as it will lead to another fifth of the city being without any waste collection at all that week.
At council committee tonight, I sought assurances that any problems caused by - for example - black bags ripped open by seagull etc, would be swiftly attended to and I was given that assurance.