Orihuela Town Council fails to maintain a clean environment for its inhabitants.

Just over one week ago I posted an article entitled 'Mr Stupid dumps his palm leaves' (I moved them for him) about the large mounds of rubbish left by the Orihuela Town Council in the road close to my house. The substantial pile of garden rubbish had been there for over one week before my observation.

Well it is now eleven days later; as can be seen in the photograph above, the quantity of rubbish has doubled and still the Council has done nothing to remove it. The metal skip is full and the surrounding pile is growing daily aided by householders and commercial gardeners.

Almost, every evening a Council refuse collection lorry empties the two tone grey plastic household waste skip (seen on the left in the photograph). Assuming that there exists a system whereby the driver of the nightly lorry can report problems of large quantities uncollected rubbish in the streets to his managers, it would not seem unreasonable to expect the problem to have been cleaned-up! But of course; I'm forgetting this is Spain and the Orihuela Town Council.

This is not a new situation. In October 2010, two years ago this week I wrote an open letter to Monica Lorente, the then Alcaldesa (Mayor), about the 'Orihuela Town Council's 'Streetfill' Site Policy' and followed it up with two updates . Two years later and the new tripartite Council lead by Monserrate Guillén, leader of the Los Verdes (Green) party, has continued with the previous government's policy of leaving the rubbish in the streets, to decompose, to save collection costs.

There have been many regular occasions when it has been necessary for me to send a photograph of a pile of uncollected rubbish to the council's technical department, asking for action to be taken to clear the road. A recent example is that on the 10^th July 2012 after the rubbish had been left for 10 days, just three months ago, the council was asked to clean-up the rubbish in the photograph below. It took them until the 28^th July 2012 to act, by which time the pile had grown.

There have been several articles recently in the local papers about similar examples of the problem my neighbours and myself experience as a direct result of the failure of the Orihuela Town Council to maintain a clean environment for its inhabitants. It shouldn't be necessary for residents to continually have to remind the Council of its responsibilities and its continuing failings!



Follow up article: Orihuela Town Council have reacted to my Weblog.