Monday, June 2, 2014

Celebrating our trashman

Ours is a community of self.  So near to the Kajang Municipality yet we are not served by the MPKj.  Except for being at their council building to pay for the annual land tax, we barely had contact with them.  We have the ketua kampung who we see at kenduris.  Maybe the men would see more of him at the mosque/surau.  The wakil rakyat?  We'll see him at close to election time, at an interval of 4 - 5 years at the most.  So much for extracting services from these folks.  Incidentally, DS Wan Azizah's N25 boundary stopped at about 800 m from our community.  So no service from she either!

Who do we see often, and gladly wanting to see more of him?  Our trashman!  Our trash collection is 'privatized'.  We pay RM20 a month for the service.  He used to come twice or trice a week, come rain or shine, driving his modified truck with the sides raised high to accommodate the piling trash.  However, of late he is no longer coming on a regular basis.  Unprepared for this, our trash had been piling and overflowing our bins.  Scavenging cats start having field nights (days at times) and with that the stench and flies.  I had taken to rebagging our trash in much sturdier bags and tying them with strong rubber bands preventing the maggots from wriggling out.

He made an appearance one day armed with newspaper cuttings.  Seemed that private trash operators are now being harassed by MPKj and they can no longer use the dump site that they normally use to dump the trash.  They had been paying for the use of the facility, charged by the truckload, but is now not available for their use.  While negotiation was taking place with MPKj, the filled trash trucks lined the road leading to the dump site.  The smell and the flies annoyed the kampung folks who then took matters in their own hand.  They took to breaking the windscreen and side windows!

With a no-win in sight, our trashman took to looking for alternative dump sites.  The closest that he could find is somewhere close to KLIA, over an hour away (by car).  His truck would take over 2 hours.  So now the regularity of our trash collection suffers.

6 comments:

  1. We see no YB. We have not seen one for 20 years since we moved here. We see traskmen every so rarely, but we see many many cows and sheep crowding the trash cans, having their meals any time of the day. Do we have someone to voice our complaint?

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  2. Thrash is not just where you are. I am on the frienge of the highly acclaimed Kota DiPinggir Pantai - KT., where every day cows, sheep enjoying their meals from sunrise to sunset. The thtrash people come to clean the road and cart away the mess left by those fat animals. Do we complain? We have JKK, YB's and all. Do they not smell and see?

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  3. At the end of all this problem we have to go back to the good old time when people simply had their individual open fire, using the ashes as fertiliser - problems solved!

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  4. I am no less frustrated to see trash cans being pulled down by cows, sheep an all. few night ago I was on my way to Tarawih when I had to do an emergency to avoid two dark animals eating trash in the middle of my way. To my surprise they were two wild boar kids!! Can you beat that?

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  5. I am no less frustrated to see trash cans being pulled down by cows, sheep an all. few night ago I was on my way to Tarawih when I had to do an emergency to avoid two dark animals eating trash in the middle of my way. To my surprise they were two wild boar kids!! Can you beat that?

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    Replies
    1. Pak Hassan,
      So very sorry. I had not been very kind to my blog posts this past few months and had missed all your comments. My apologies.
      I couldn't agree more with you, more so for situations in Terengganu. But as you've said, "Who cares?". Maybe the cattle and kambing (and wild boars, to add) would should the place be devoid of trash. Wonder what came of all the municipal taxes collected.

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