Rubbish Piles Up In St Paul’s Bay But Mayor Pins Blame On Illegal Dumping
Heaps of rubbish scattered across St Paul’s Bay have left residents in the area scrambling for solutions amid unsightly scenes and fetid smells filling the streets.
Photos sent to Lovin Malta shed light on the situation as mounds of litter, trash bags and questionably-discarded items fill the streets and pavements – to the dismay of residents in the area.
“It has become a ghetto,” said one resident. “Just rubbish everywhere you look.”
“Black bags are dumped outside on days where their collection is not due,” another resident said. “They are ultimately left there to fester, if not merely just being an eye-sore to the persons living there.”
It’s not the first time local residents expressed concern about the state of the town’s streets with footage over the years showing pavements covered in people’s rubbish, including mattresses, old furniture, glass, and general waste.
Speaking to Lovin Malta, St Paul’s Bay Mayor Alfred Grima claimed that the pile-up of rubbish in the area was the result of residents not discarding waste responsibly.
A failure to stick waste collection schedules in Malta’s most densely populated town potentially spells disaster in terms of the pile-ups of trash filling the streets.
The town has a total of 45,000 permanent residents. And combatting the problem on such a large scale could prove a tricky endeavour.
Grima stressed that the Local Council was “doing their utmost, as it had been for several years,” to collect trash otherwise inappropriately discarded.
The town Mayor even shared a photo depicting one such instance where a heap of litter was found discarded in one neighborhood, duly recovered by the waste collection services moments later.
Photo Credit: Alfred Grima
Last year, the Local Council added an additional mixed waste door-to-door collection once a week to further encourage residents to dispose of their waste properly.
And while Grima maintained that the Council was doing its part to ensure the streets were kept clean, a lack of manpower still gummed up the works. Particularly where effective enforcement was concerned.
That said, he urged residents to comply with the recycling scheme. And that ultimately, the cooperation of those discarding waste and those collecting it will make all the difference.
Two years ago, one councillor spoke up after local council workers were forced to clean up several abandoned mattresses and various other bits of trash that were left on a roadside pavement.
At the time, he said he was tired of dealing with the “same problem every year” and called for more serious enforcement of the area.
What do you make of the litter situation in St Paul’s Bay?