Waste firm says sorry as ‘Suez Crisis’ continues
The waste company at the centre of a bin controversy has apologised and pledged to catch up with the backlog of uncollected waste by the end of the month. Suez took over the £152 million contract to empty bins in Maidstone, Swale and Ashford on March 25.
However, the service has been dogged by problems, resulting in rubbish piling up in the streets and complaints from fed-up residents.
Suez has vowed to fix the issues. General manager Vinnie Masseri said on Thursday last week: “We are all working hard to get used to the new contract and to collect all the waste that is being presented, however, we know that at the moment, we’re not completing all of our rounds on the scheduled day.
“This isn’t the standard of service we aim to provide longer term and we expect the service levels to improve as everyone gets used to the changes. “We’d like to apologise to the
households affected and reassure them that our teams are working hard to minimise disruption on the ground.
“We thank residents for their patience while we bed in the new service. In the meantime, please do leave your bins out if they have not been collected and we will get to them as soon as possible.”
Cllr Stuart Jeffery (Green), who represents Bridge ward on Maidstone council, previously blasted the authority’s Conservative leadership for poor communication about the issues. He described Suez’s new service as being “like a crisis”. This week he told the Messenger: “My inbox isn't as filled so it's either people are getting used to it or it's slowly improved, so I hope it's the latter.
“I think we are getting there just painfully slowly but the apology is a good start.”
MP for Faversham and MidKent, Helen Whately, said: “This isn't good enough and residents are rightly angry. There’s been some good news filtering into my inbox over the past couple of days, so hopefully they’re starting to get a handle on it.”
Maidstone MP elen Grant went further. She said: “I am afraid ‘teething problems’ is not good enough and subject to the outcome of my investigations, I could go as far as to suggest that compensation or a rebate might be the order of the day for some suffering residents.”