Dear Editor,
I saw in SN of Wednesday July 21 you reported that Mayor Green was “very satisfied” with the garbage collection efforts of his council workers, and that City Hall is working to ensure that a health crisis does not develop.
He is too easily satisfied. My family told me that they saw the M&CC tractor; so this was obviously not one of the five city wards that he said were not reached.
They called out to the workers and said there was garbage to be collected, but were told that only rubbish from the parapets was being collected. We have a bin on the parapet, but they did not empty it. My family only perchance saw them. They never notified us or our neighbours they were coming (like how they took the trouble to send wasteful notices of demand and threat of prosecution in two weeks, three weeks ago), so whatever they were doing they were working not healthily, but stealthily.
Before 7 a.m. that very day I saw both bagged and loose rubbish strewn partly on the road and on the parapet in the south-western part of Lamaha Gardens, where it probably fell out of the over-filled tray of one of the unregulated private garbage entrepreneurs. When I returned home after 4 p.m. it was still there. And it was still there when I last passed this Saturday morning. If I knew where to put it I would have moved it myself.
I had every sympathy for the plight of the Mayor. A good manager praises his workers only after inspection of work. It is lack of good management, all round, that citizens are suffering from.
Yours faithfully,
Alfred Bhulai
Editor’s note: Mayor Green had later clarified with the newspaper that he meant he was satisfied with the efforts of his workers given the limited resources they were working with. He was not satisfied with the overall situation.
