Chinanews.com, August 2nd. According to the US "World Journal" report, it has been a month since the New York City Sanitation Bureau (Department of Sanitation) has cut its budget by 100 million yuan. Rubbish can be seen everywhere; and the situation in Chinatown is equally bad. Residents who spontaneously clean the streets spent more than three hours on the morning of August 1 to clean up the roads and rubbish.
In New York City, street corner trash bins overflowing with discarded objects seem to be common, but since July this year, sanitation problems have become more serious. Residents of Chinatown said that the situation is now more serious than ever. Human hair pointed out that not only Chinatown, but the whole city is suffering from the same sanitation challenges. Those rats and cockroaches are eating out in the trash can. The city government must do something about it."
In June of this year, New York City cut 160 million yuan from the city’s Clean Bureau budget, reducing public garbage pickup by 60%. City Clean Bureau Director Kathryn Garcia said the budget was tighter than the previous fiscal year. But the garbage collection service on the roadside remains the same, but people produce a lot more garbage than usual, especially in some residential areas outside the city.
"Garbage trucks will soon be full when they bypass these communities, because many people are still staying at home because of the epidemic." She said that these trucks usually help pick up small garbage scattered on the roadside, as well as some cleaning staff. Even if they are essential workers, they have been reduced in budget cuts.
Due to the decline in tourism caused by the new crown epidemic, many offices are still closed. Residents in dense areas such as Manhattan choose to leave the city during the epidemic. Some communities are still relatively clean, but Chinatown, where small businesses and catering industries are concentrated, is a different picture.
The Chinatown street cleaning activity initiated by Chen Jialing, a member of the Manhattan Third Community Committee, still starts every Saturday morning. On the 1st, a dozen residents took nearly three hours to clean the streets and garbage.
Chen Jialing said that everyone is tired with "backaches". The special feature of Chinatown is that the flow of residents here is not large, and the business economy is in urgent need of recovery. If hygiene is not up to standard, everything will be difficult to achieve.
And is it possible to transfer resources from communities that do not need garbage cleaning so much now to communities that urgently need garbage cleaning, so as to maintain a balance as much as possible under the condition of limited resources. In this regard, Garcia said that because of the reduction in the number of garbage trucks, the authorities want What is done is to consider how to allocate them, try to ensure that cleaning is allocated according to the number of trash cans, so that the service matches the number.
Garcia pointed out that as the epidemic stabilizes, more and more people are returning to the city, and the garbage collection will continue to be adjusted; but at present, how can sanitation facilities keep up with the increasing amount of garbage under the greatly reduced budget? There is no clear plan. (Zhang Chen)