FRANCE 24 report: Brazzaville residents choking under piles of rubbish
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00:00Every morning as he walks out into the alley,
00:02Christian Koudela finds himself faced with a pile of rubbish.
00:05We're almost two weeks in and now the fire we've set here
00:10is giving off smells that are more than nauseating.
00:13It's painful and disturbing.
00:15Brazzaville, whose inhabitants used to call it the green city
00:18for its cleanliness, is now nearly unrecognizable.
00:21Rubbish is heaped up on the pavements in mounds
00:23that can reach up to several meters high.
00:25The piles of waste are the result of a strike
00:27among rubbish collectors in the city.
00:30We're demanding our rights, our two salaries,
00:32the month of July and the month of August.
00:35That's why we are making these demands.
00:37We are fed up.
00:38We want the company to at least think about us.
00:41We do very hard work.
00:43We work every day until Sunday.
00:44We don't get a rest and we are exposed to illness.
00:49A local association has decided to take the crisis
00:51into its own hands,
00:53trying to make the city air breathable and healthy again.
00:56Equipped with dustbins and shovels,
00:57dozens of its volunteers pick up the rubbish.
01:02It's because we're patriots that we thought it was unacceptable
01:05to live in such a polluted environment.
01:07And that's why we're doing this.
01:12We're doing it not because we expect anything.
01:14We're doing it because we're the children of this country
01:17and we love this country.
01:18No one can love this country better than we do.
01:22But despite the volunteers' best efforts,
01:24Brazzaville is still overflowing with rubbish.
01:26Residents are hoping and praying for a swift end to the crisis.
01:30Discussions between the sanitation company Averda
01:32and its employees are ongoing.
01:34The company's directors declined to answer our questions.