It’s time for council to brush up on fly-tipping VIEWPOINTS
YET again Council enforcement jobsworths have swooped on two women and fined them £300 because they ‘fed’ pigeons in Piccadilly Gardens. In other words, they were easy prey.
Meanwhile, fly-tipping remains in situ for long periods of time while the street cleaners in their vans appear to drive past and either don’t see it or simply ignore it.
A settee was dumped near Lidl in Newton Heath a few weeks ago and it’s still there along with other rubbish next to it, and a mattress lay on a car park for around two weeks. When fly-tipping is reported it’s not all being removed.
The Greengate roundabout at Hollinwood Avenue is awash with litter despite there being notices asking people not to litter. Litter bins both on the streets and in parks are often full to overflowing so are obviously not being emptied often enough.
So much litter (crisp and sweet packets, plastic bottles, etc) had been dropped near a local school that it was nearly impossible to see the pavement. For months a football club’s pitches were strewn with hundreds of plastic bottles and their litter bins were left overflowing.
Whilst streets are litter picked at times, litter caught in hedges and undergrowth remains. It seems a huge amount of litter is being removed by volunteers who shift rubbish which has lain there for years in some cases. Communal refuse bins are usually inadequate and encourage fly-tipping because so many households have to use them. Even accessing tips has become an ordeal and this will have caused an increase in fly-tipping.
Manchester Council is failing miserably with the fly-tipping and litter situation and urgently needs to concentrate its efforts on brushing up on its cleanliness skills and stop making criminals of innocent people who drop a bit of food for our feathered friends just to make a fast buck.
Cllr Rabnawaz Akbar’s message is that the Council doesn’t want people to feed the pigeons. My message to him would be that I would like to live in a clean environment where the street cleaners shift rubbish which has obviously been fly-tipped and not drive past it; substantial fines are handed out to those dropping litter and fly-tipping, and enforcement officers patrol near schools and on streets making a note of those places which need attention and reporting it, instead of standing in Piccadilly Gardens waiting to pounce on someone merely for feeding birds.
If the litter situation is so big that council litter pickers are struggling, then perhaps it needs to invest in more CCTV and mechanical sweepers and get the job done and perhaps while they’re at it they can also buy some more vacuums to clean grids out so we don’t have massive floods when it rains heavily.
JML, Moston