Villagers block road with wall of trash to protest lack of garbage pickups in Jambi

Photo: Anang Aris S Aas / Facebook
Photo: Anang Aris S Aas / Facebook

Something stank in Village of Beliung yesterday evening, and it was easy to see what it was. Dozens of local residents blocked the main road running through the village with a wall of trash, forcing vehicles to turn around rather than run through the rotting roadblock.

 

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The reason residents of the village, located in the Central Sumatran city of Jambi, had set up the odorous obstacle was to protest the government sanitation agency ignoring their growing garbage problem.

“The stench has gone everywhere. This garbage has been piling up more and more for days. The officers have not transported this garbage away at all. So the trash is not going anywhere, it’s just been accumulating,” a local resident named Herman told reporters at the scene as quoted by Detik.

Herman said the village’s residents had discussed the garbage problem with officials and reported the problem to sub-district authorities but had yet to receive any response, leading to their frustration and finally the formation of the trash wall road block. He said that barrier would stay put until their village’s garbage problem with addressed.

It only took a few hours for the rubbish barrier to get the attention of government officials including the head of Jambi’s public works department. They argued that sanitation workers had been dealing with the garbage in the area on their daily rounds but they were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of trash. Herman and other local residents argued it wasn’t coming from them but others who were using their village as a dumping ground because of the large number of dumpsters the city had placed there.

In the end, the officials promised to send enough workers today to get rid of all of the trash and would also remove some of the dumpsters in the area. That’s one way to take out the trash.



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