BELFAST City Council say Castle residents in North Belfast will have their wheelie boxes collected next week after over five weeks of no collections.
Households in the area have been left with overflowing stack boxes which are used for their recycling needs as a result.
Local Alliance councillor Nuala McAllister said she has been inundated with calls from local residents about the issue.
“It is unacceptable that people living in the Castle area who are under the pilot stacked boxes recycling scheme have not had their recycling collected for over a month.
“With everyone at home, there's no doubt an increase in recycling.
“I have been getting at least five calls every day from residents who have nowhere to put their recycling stuff. Not everyone has a garage to store stuff.
“I understand there are staffing issues within the Council but it seems residents with these stack boxes are being sacrificed.
“I have been putting pressure on council officers to get the situation sorted and was disappointed to learn it won't take place this week as expected.”
Nuala is also calling for all households in Belfast to be under the same scheme for recycling and waste collection.
“This has made me realize more than ever before that we need to get all of Belfast under the same scheme in terms of bins.
“Everyone needs to have the same recycling and waste collection. We can’t have it being different street by street.
“Even I, as an elected representative have been confused to what goes on with bins, so I can’t imagine how confused residents are.”
Belfast City Council said the service was temporarily suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic with collections set to resume from next Monday (April 27).
A spokesperson said; “Due to waste collection challenges resulting from the Covid19 pandemic, Council temporarily suspended its wheelie box trial collection service for North Belfast residents.
“As with all our service delivery at this current time, this decision remained under review, and Council is now in a position to resume a wheelie box collection service for residents of the Castle area.
“In order to protect our staff and help prevent the spread of Covid19, we have had to make some changes to how residents sort their waste for collection. We will be providing this new information for residents on our website and social media channels, as well as communicating with them directly via mail.
“Collections will resume week commencing Monday April 27.”
