According to CNN, in recent days, a man named Will Timms - an epidemic control employee in Birmingham (UK) - has been busy with work, his phone ringing continuously because customers need him to remove mice, cockroaches and unwanted creatures from the house.
The reason is the serious stagnation of waste in Birmingham, where about 17,000 tons of waste are piled up, up to several meters high and scattered across the streets. The situation arose from a strike of nearly 400 garbage collectors, after the city government decided to remove a position in the team.
Unite - a trade union representing workers - said the decision hindered the process of raising and revoking some employees, causing their income to decrease by 8,000 pounds (about 10,390 USD) per year in the worst cases.
The Birmingham government denied the figure and confirmed it had proposed replacement positions, retraining and voluntary leave. On its website, the city council emphasized that no one has to lose money and changes in personnel are part of efforts towards financial stability and modernization of garbage collection services.
The dispute then escalated and entered the fourth month of a strike. Currently, only a part of the garbage collection team and contract staff are still working, with the number of garbage trucks operating is less than half of normal.
As a result, a series of residential areas - among 1.2 million residents in Birmingham - have not been garbage-ghosted for weeks. A person passing by named Abid complained: " garbage is everywhere, mice are everywhere, they are even bigger than cats. My cat even had to run away when he saw a rat. This is England. It's 2025. What's going on?
While people have to live in the stench, for Timms, this is a rare business opportunity. He was so busy that he could not meet all the demand and had to give up some shifts to competing units. Timms said that the number of calls from residents who detected mice in their homes has increased by about 50% since the strike began.
He said that he once caught a rat 56 cm long (from head to tail) and emphasized that it was not an adult. Some customers even burst into tears when they discovered a rat in the house and urgently asked him to come and handle it immediately. Spreads everywhere cars, ventilation holes, under the bed, Timms said.
Despite seeing neighborhoods surrounded by garbage and mice, when asked how he felt about Birmingham regularly appearing in the media due to the garbage crisis, Timms said: "The situation is not really bad like that."
However, last week, Birmingham City authorities were forced to declare a state of serious incident. John Cotton, a city council leader, admitted that the situation is causing harm and inconvenience to the community. A sad paradox, when Birmingham - the second largest city in the UK - fell into a serious sanitation crisis, in the heart of a country with the world's sixth largest economy.
