Monday, June 06, 2011

Acting responsible - "garbage"

This is me interacting with the Romanian authorities, and it's not the first time I'm doing this...

Before Easter my responsible neighbors cleaned the green area next to our apartment building. After gathering the plastic bottles, pieces of clothing, building material and all the other stuff Romanians love leaving around in nature, they did not call anyone to pick it up and just left it there. In the mean time rats and cockroaches made a living around it...not to mention the flees and ticks that have a blast in the tall grass that grew around the tiny garbage hills.

Pissed by the fact that for the last 21 years nobody ever came to clean this area, I called the Public Domain Authority...and they noted my concern...for three times in the past month and a half. Finally their verdict was that the are is not actually public, it's private. Even though there's no fence around and the land is basically abandoned (typical for Bucharest) they cannot come clean the area. When I asked whether there's a law punishing owners for basically abandoning their land the answer was simple..."No, I don't think so....it's just a matter of morality".

I found out that there is actually a law punishing this, but you have to call the Community Police in your district, they give you the phone number of your area's police. That's where you can make a complaint by phone. They were very kind and explained the whole procedure. Now it's in the hands of the environment section of the police department (I had no idea this existed). They will analyze the situation, discover who the owners are...send them a request to clean the land and if they don't do it....fine them.

My guess...the garbage is going to remain there for a long time, and most likely the hills will become mountains at some point.