Birmingham City Conservative Group has slammed the Labour Run Birmingham City Council for failing to collect residents refuse during the on-going strike chaos. Figures released by the City Council revealed that 2111 tonnes of waste a week was building up on the streets of Birmingham for every week the strike was on-going under the Council’s failing contingency plans. This is equal to the weight of 140 double decker buses or 20 blue whales being left on the streets by the Labour Council each week.
The strike action has come when the Council already had a backlog of 2000 roads across the City which had not had their collections made on time, even before the strike.
In announcing the strike, the Unite regional officer said “We engaged with waste and refuse bosses in a constructive manner only to learn that it was a massive overspend which is driving these cuts and not austerity measures”. The council said it was “very disappointed” by the warning and said Unite was “effectively holding the city to ransom”.
Some household waste has now been uncollected for over six weeks with residents reporting incidents of maggots, rats and flies infesting piles of waste left uncollected. This followed press reports that the growing mountain of waste across the City is leaving residents as risk of a wave of rats infesting local streets.