One giant pile of dumped rubbish had to be removed by crane after fly-tippers blocked access to a children’s park as the long-running bin strike rumbles on in the city
JCBs and cranes have been drafted in to shift massive mountains of waste piled up on Birmingham’s streets.
Workers at a community centre in the city had to use a digger to move festering piles of rubbish left outside a children’s play park. Hundreds of people dumped their uncollected rubbish at the site in Tyseley after mobile household waste trucks parked up. Locals said some people drove over ten miles with bin bags in their cars to chuck them in the massive pile.
A worker at the community centre said she was nearly brought to tears watching people toss their bin bags into bushes. The woman said: “The rubbish spread was right across the car park, it was disgraceful.”
A JCB was deployed to clean the mountain of rubbish throughout the night and crews sterilised the car park.
Huge traffic jams appeared outside another mobile tip site in the city as hundreds of householders took their waste to waiting trucks.
Eyewitnesses claimed there was at least one crash caused by the gridlock outside Woodgate Valley Country Park in Bartley Green.
The Mirror revealed yesterday how monster rats the size of baby monkeys are invading the streets of Birmingham.
An estimated 17,000 tonnes of waste remains uncollected across the UK’s second city amid the ongoing bin strikes.
Birmingham City Council declared a major incident on Monday, saying the move was taken in response to public health concerns.
The all-out strike started on March 11, but waste collections have been disrupted since January.
Members of the Unite union went out on strike in a dispute over the role of waste recycling and collection officer (WRCO) being removed.
The union claims the move will leave about 150 members £8,000 worse off.
Unite says the dispute will not end unless the “hugely damaging” cuts to bin collectors’ wages are reversed.
The council said it scrapped the WRCO role to put the city’s waste operations in line with national practice.
It says only 17 members of staff will lose a maximum amount of just over £6,000 in pay.
