Four decades of management and the garbage in Montevideo continues to be news

By Agustin Miller

Garbage in Montevideo: the cost of four decades of the same recipe

Montevideo woke up, once again, under the weight of its own inefficiency. After Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the garbage in Montevideo was once again the dominant landscape in neighborhoods that, far from the “smart city” promised in the campaign, seem immersed in a cyclical health crisis. The overflowing containers are not a novelty, but rather the symptom of a management model that, after 40 uninterrupted years of Frente-Amplista administration, seems to have exhausted all possible excuses.

The director of Environmental Development, Leonardo Herou, came out to put cold cloths ensuring that the situation would normalize over the weekend. However, for the neighbor who must dodge torn bags and deal with the nauseating smell in front of his house, the speech sounds like a broken record. It is difficult to digest that, after four decades of “learning” in the Montevideo Municipality (IM), a strike by Adeom and two days of holidays are still capable of collapsing the entire cleaning system of the capital.

Whose fault is it: the game of responsibilities in IM

As the popular saying goes, “it's not the pig's fault, but the one who scratches its back.” The recurring crisis of garbage in Montevideo It has leaders with a first and last name, but above all, a deep political root. While Mario Bergara's administration tries to divert attention towards the union conflict, Adeom responds harshly: there is a lack of resources, a lack of personnel and, above all, there is a lack of a coherent waste policy that does not depend on the good will of the workers. officials so that the city don't explode.

Adeom vice president Martín Barreto noted that the volumes of waste simply do not fit into the current system. This reveals an alarming lack of forecast for dates that, by calendar, are known to be high waste generation. The question that arises is inevitable: how is it possible that after 40 years managing the same department, the administration has not managed to design an effective contingency plan for the garbage in Montevideo? The failure is technical, but it is also disrespectful to the taxpayer who pays one of the highest cleanup fees in the region.

The summons to Herou and the demand for active opposition

Faced with the visual and health disaster, the nationalist councilor Juan Martín Bárcena did not sit idly by and announced the summons of Leonardo Herou to the Departmental Board. He The objective is for the director to explain an “action plan” which, until now, has only been seen in PowerPoint presentations. The garbage in Montevideo It has ceased to be an aesthetic problem and has become a public health concern, affecting coexistence and exposing the population to infectious sources in the middle of summer.

Bárcena was blunt in her social networks pointing out that the accumulation of waste negatively impacts the quality of life of all Montevideo residents. The opposition insists that it cannot continue to be managed for “patches” and that promises to eliminate containers or transform the service are, at this point, fireworks to cover up the filth. The reality is that the garbage in Montevideo It overwhelms the patience of a citizenry that sees its capital decline while the official discourse tries to cover up the decline.

The neighbor who votes and then complains about the bad smell

There is a part of society that must also make a deep self-criticism. It is common to hear citizens lament the garbage in Montevideo while they walk among waste, but they are the same ones who have ratified at the polls, election after election, the same management model since the return to democracy. You cannot expect different results by always doing the same thing, and the state of the streets today is the exact reflection of that electoral complacency.

The IM has had time, budget and political majority to turn the capital into a model of cleanliness. If today the garbage in Montevideo continues to win the battle, it is because the political system has settled into a comfort zone where the fault always lies with “the others” (the union, the climate or people's excessive consumption). Meanwhile, the taxpayer continues to pay for a service they do not receive and the city continues to be a monument to inefficiency sustained over time.

How long will the residents of Montevideo tolerate that their health and daily landscape depend on a management that has not been able to solve the problem of filth in almost half a century of government?