Another strike will impact the rubbish collection services in several Brussels municipalities this Friday. Residents of the affected areas are advised to keep uncollected rubbish bags inside, but they are mounting up in many streets.
Unions at the rubbish collection service Agence Bruxelles-Propreté (ABP) confirmed that employees will strike again on Friday 10 May. The agency confirmed that the scheduled rubbish collections will not take place in 12 of the 19 communes in the region.
The affected municipalities are Bruxelles Haren, Laeken, Neder-over-Heembeek, Etterbeek, Evere, Ixelles (and some streets adjoining Etterbeek), Koekelberg, Molenbeek, Saint-Josse-Ten-Noode, Schaerbeek, Woluwe-Saint-Lambert and Woluwe-Saint-Pierre.
The agency is asking people living in the communes that will be impacted by the strike to check the rubbish calendar for their area and not to put out their rubbish bags to avoid littering the streets.
Rubbish piling up
The strike follows the four-day action held from Thursday to Sunday last week. The same request was issued ahead of that strike, which was expected to affect Anderlecht, the area known as the Pentagon in the city centre, the area surrounding the canal, Bockstael in Laeken, Louise, Forest, Ixelles, Jette and Saint-Gilles.
Bins were not collected until one or two days later. In Saint-Gilles, as well as Schaerbeek and Etterbeek where the strike was not planned, the yellow bags for cardboard waste were still not collected on Wednesday 8 May.
"We focused our efforts on collecting the orange and white bin bags first, as these tend to start stinking more quickly," the agency's spokesperson Virginie Samyn told The Brussels Times.
She stressed that, for the upcoming strike, the agency is again urgently calling on people not to put out their rubbish bins, but that additional teams will be sent out in the days following the strike to pick up those that were left out.
Rubbish bins on a road in Schaerbeek on Wednesday 8 May, almost one week after their scheduled but cancelled collection day. Credit: The Brussels Times
It is unclear how the strike will impact the collection service at mechanised container collections, dedicated collections and Recyparks (the region's recycling parks). The agency will provide more information about the exact impact of the action on Friday 10 May. "We regret this strike and apologise to Brussels residents who have been inconvenienced."
The strike actions concern holiday leave for 2023, which has not yet been granted because of the high rate of absenteeism faced by the agency. Negotiations are ongoing to strike a balance between carrying out ABP tasks despite reduced staffing levels, combating the high absenteeism and granting leave.
The agency earlier this month also announced it would not be cleaning the streets in the Northern Quarter neighbourhood around the Brussels North station after another attack on an employee there.
