Disposal of garden waste and extortion

lspeng1951 — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 04:21:07 +0000

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Before I dwell on matters relating to Plant Kingdom, I am making an article on the disposal of garden waste by the MPPP (Majlis Perbandaran Pulau Pinang or the City, sorry George Town is not a city as yet, or the Municipal Council of Penang. The MPPP had outsourced such related disposal to private contractor/s for each allocated area. I am not so sure about the days when such garden waste, unwanted plants, trimmings etc are carted off by these lorries. I think it is Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays but to be confirmed. There is a shrub planted in front of my house compound. This was done to prevent the motorcycles from using this pavement when there is a traffic jam along the main road. There are a few misses when one departs from the front gate of the house to find a reckless motorcyclist zooming past the car using the pavement. As the small tree was planted outside the house compound, it is rightfully the property of the Council.
The shrub had actually grown into a small tallish looking tree. For the last few weeks with the wind and rain, the tree was swerving like crazy. Thus to prevent any untowards incident of it falling onto my fence or worse onto the main road, I asked a gardener to trim the tree to a manageable height with my own expense on last Sunday 19 June, 2011. The smaller leaves are packed into 3 black garbage bags and bigger branches laid neatly by the pavement. Come Monday 20 June, 2011 I heard some yelling at my gate in the early morning but did not pay muach attention to this. When I was leaving for work I saw a green truck parked in front of my house. Two Bangladeshi workers were yelling at the top of voices demanding money to move the garden waste and trimmed branches. I simply refuse to pay out of the principle that we had paid assessment taxes to have such services. Next thing the lorry driver of dark complexion or perhaps the one-in-charge of the operations came down and pretended to take photograph using his handphone just to intimidate me! This infuriated me even further as this tantamount to “extortion and intimidation”. They just drove away without loading the garden waste.
I know my rights as this shrub is the Council’s property and rightfully they should pay me to trim the tree. It is just outrageous that I am threatened to pay these goons. I called the Council Hotline and was given the Department in-charge of garden waste disposal at 04 2633000 and spoke to one-in-charge who told me NOT TO PAY them. On the next day of Wednesday 22 June 20011, the green truck came and carted away the trimmed branches and the bags without a singe cent or sen paid!
Morale of story: Know your rights and Stand for these.

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Disposal of garden waste and extortion