A Newport teenager who found around 100 needles dumped in a popular lane has criticised the City Council for not removing them sooner.
A Newport teenager who found around 100 needles dumped in a popular lane has criticised the City Council for not removing them sooner.The young man, 16, said he first saw the pile of needles in the lane which is used to access the Iceland supermarket off Clarence Place, on Friday. The teenager used the route again on Saturday morning to get to the train station and found them lying in exactly the same place at around 9am. He took a photo of them and that his aunt, who does not wish to be named, posted it onto the Argus social media site.
He said he was gravely concerned that children who often use the lane were at serious risk of injury or infection and tried to report the hazardous waste to the council over the weekend.
“I live about five minutes away and walk that route every day as it is a faster route to the station. I also walk my little sister along there.
“I have seen rubbish there before but never needles.
“There were around 100 with some scattered along the lane.
“I saw the council’s street cleaners and told them about it. I said that someone needs to clean them up straight away and they told me that it was not their responsibility.
“In my opinion it should have been done straight away.
“It’s not acceptable that they remain there for most of the weekend, with kids using the lane.”
Mr Morris said he had heard children asking their parents what the needles were.
“Some of them don’t have caps on it’s a real hazard.
“They should have cleaned it up as soon as I reported it to them and the matter made a priority.”
Mr Morris said the needles had been taken away by Monday morning but wanted to see a quicker response time in their removal.
He also made attempts to contact Newport City Council by phone to report the matter on both Saturday and Sunday and wants to see a weekend helpline set up for residents to report such incidents.
A Newport City Council spokeswoman said it’s streetscene department removed a quantity of syringes from privately-owned land at the back of Clarence Place on Monday.
So, a response that was neither instant nor same day, and thus with a Friday to Monday lag disagreement about the quality of that response from Newport City Council. Perhaps they don’t have streetscene staff working on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays. That is improbable and the more likely explanation is a closed office that fails to process these reports with the necessary urgency.
We have many reports of “urgent” requests for needle retrieval to be left on an answerphone – hence the presumably tongue-in-cheek claims of immediate response, by the answerphone, – to be completed only days later. Perhaps in the minds of Newport City Council that is adequate?
It seems however, that those involved have done a good job in prodding Newport City Council to action. On their web pages, there is no mention of needles and related drug litter, and no dedicated reporting mechanism. Newport City Council does not collect clinical or medical waste.