“I saw a rat in front of my house”: in Toulouse, the anger of the forgotten garbage collectors
Since the end of the strike more than two weeks ago, garbage cans have not been picked up in certain neighborhoods. Residents experience their fed up.
“Hello, I would like to know when our streets will be clean again? “Asks Maxime, a resident of the Minimes district in Toulouse, last Friday. At the other end of the telephone, an agent from Allô Toulouse, a town hall service, replies that “we will have to wait another two to three weeks”. Jean-Luc Moudenc, the president of the Metropolis, had already invited his constituents to wait “two to three weeks”, in the middle of January, when the garbage collectors’ strike ended.
Maxime never saw the effects of resuming garbage collection. In the rue Honoré de Balzac, where he lives, the Toulousain ensures that no “garbage truck has come for weeks”. The garbage cans are overflowing, rubbish is piling up on the sidewalk. “I’m lucky to have a shed, ironically the resident. It is filled with garbage bags. In front of my house, for the first time, I saw a rat”.
In this suburban area as elsewhere, waste collection makes people forgotten. “You just have to take a tour of the city to realize it. But the situation which drags on poses problems of health and moral damage, ”plagues the inhabitant of Minimes. A few streets away, Martine*, a retired woman, agrees: “It bothers me, we see that some neighborhoods are tight and others are not. Which is the case here… “
“The delay will be caught up by the end of the week”
The absorption of the delay would therefore take… delay. According to Nicolas Refutin, secretary general FO Toulouse Métropole (majority), several reasons explain this collection in slow motion: “There is a stock of waste in the streets which is enormous. The new working method that the community has put in place (the law on the transformation of the public service has put an end to the “finished-party”, Editor’s note) also wants a slower collection, he continues. Part of the deposits are affected by a strong wave of Covid. There is a high rate of absenteeism at the moment. »
The scenario is more optimistic with Vincent Terrail-Novès, the vice-president of Toulouse Métropole in charge of waste. He argues that “at the end of the week, the situation should return to normal”. “In the field there are garbage collectors, agents from private companies and also agents from the territorial poles called in as reinforcements. From what the teams tell me, the delay is about to be caught up, ”announces the elected official. Could all-out waste collection overcome the mounds of waste in the streets? To have…