Words: Richard Beecham, local democracy reporter
A senior Leeds city councillor has accused the authority of unfairly blaming Covid-19 for a spike in the number of missed bin collections during the summer, and has called on the authority to apologise for missed bin collections over the summer.
Leeds City Council’s Liberal Democrats group leader Coun Stewart Golton had claimed to a full council meeting that this was despite the fact that, on one given day, only three of 83 staff absences in waste management were directly related to Covid illnesses or quarantine.
The portfolio-holder for environment Coun Mohammed Rafique (Lab) claimed that many staff absences during July and August were due to members of staff taking annual leave, due to not being able to earlier in the pandemic.
He went on to claim hard-working frontline staff “deserved some respite” after a difficult year.
Numerous councillors had complained in the meeting about the soaring number of missed bin collections over the summer, which led to the authority announcing pressures on the service over the last year would instead prioritise black and green bin collections over brown bins.
Speaking at the meeting, Coun Golton asked Coun Rafique:
“Being the person ultimately responsible for (refuse workers’) wellbeing and human resources management in that organisation, will the executive member offer an apology to the people of Leeds suffering from overflowing bins, poor oversight of waste services, to ensure annual leave is fairly distributed, sickness is monitored, and overreliance on voluntary overtime is ended?
“We need to enable an effective waste collection service for the people of Leeds that they already pay for.”
The question needs to be asked that apart from the missed, or delayed, bin collections what is happening about the food collection service that was suspended in the summer, again with the excuse of shortage of staff due to Covid 19? Is this to be reinstated now that the ‘problems’ appear to be over and we are back to normal bin collections? Or is this an excuse to cancel this service altogether?
Currently those of us who were partaking in the waste food collection (apparently it was not Leeds wide for some reason) are having to place our waste food in our black bins which are only collected fortnightly giving rise to nauseous smells from the rotting food attracting vermin in the shape of rats, mice and ants. Also this is not very environmental friendly as the food waste was composted by Leeds City Council whereas now it is being incinerated by subcontractors which, apart from producing extra waste and gases in the process, will be being charged for as additional bulk by the subcontractors.
I find it disgusting that councillors are once again hiding behind the covid cloak to excuse a lack of performance.It would appear that they are selecting areas/streets to deliberately miss collections.This week once again Longfield road (LS28).get their brown bin emptied whilst Hammerton street which is next to it is missed(slightly more difficult access). By using covid as an excuse they are making the job of the hard working employees on the streets extremely more stressful.15.09.2021.