Years of rubbish cleared

What happens when one collects rubbish for four years? It took 40 council workers an hour to load it onto a three-tonne truck. And that's only the garbage from the driveway and garden of the house.

Forty council workers took one hour to fill a three-tonne lorry with rubbish from the driveway and garden of a double-storey link house in Taman Cempaka here yesterday.
And the clean-up job is not over because there is a mountain of rotting garbage inside the locked house, believed to have been accumulated over the past four years by the 73-year-old owner of the property.
The council’s legal department will be obtaining a court order to enable them to enter the house and remove the huge pile of smelly rubbish.
Yesterday, the council went to the house at 9am following complaints from neighbours of a stink coming from the man’s house due to his peculiar habit of collecting and keeping rubbish and junk.

Tonnes of trash: Rubbish and junk taking up most of the space inside the Taman Cempaka house in Ipoh


What happens when one collects rubbish for four years? It took 40 council workers an hour to load it onto a three-tonne truck. And that's only the garbage from the driveway and garden of the house.The houseowner was not in, but the front gate was open.
Old furniture, clothes, broken flower and cooking pots, plastic ware, bicycles, newspapers, rotten fruit and rusting refrigerators were among the items removed from the compound.
Council assistant public relations officer Mohd Syahrizal Azmi said the amount of rubbish in the compound alone filled the three-tonne lorry.
On Tuesday, Datuk Bandar Datuk Mohamad Rafiai Moktar had visited the house and instructed his men to carry out the cleaning operation.
Mohd Syahrizal said: “We have to do the cleaning up for him as the rubbish is a health hazard.”
He said the man would be brought to court to face charges of non-compliance with three notices compelling him to clean up the rubbish, which were issued since 2005.

.“He will be charged under Section 82 of the Local Government Act 1976 where he can be fined up to RM1,000 or jail up to six months, or both, if convicted,” he added.
The man had been staying in the house for the past 10 years, but his strange habit began about four years ago, neighbours said.
It is believed that his wife and a son left the house about three years ago.