Glasgow City Council have announced their bulk uplift service will be suspended over Christmas and New Year due to covid.
The council last night advised that owing to the 'rapid spread' of the virus increasing numbers of staff in the cleansing service have been required to self isolate.
The decision has been taken to direct available resources towards collecting household general waste and recycling.
As such, all bulk uplift collections will be suspended as of tomorrow (Thursday), while bookings for uplifts ended yesterday.
The council say collections will not restart until earliest Thursday January 20.
A GCC statement confirmed: "Due to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant as well as other forms of covid-19, increasing numbers of staff in our cleansing service are now required to self-isolate.
"To ensure we focus our resources on maintaining collections of household general waste and recycling, we will cease bulk uplift collections from Thursday 23 rd December 2021.
"We will stop taking bookings for bulk uplift collections, either on-line or over the phone, at the close of business Tuesday, December 21, but we anticipate that any existing requests for an uplift will be met prior to the service being suspended on December 23.
"We will reopen our booking services for the collection of bulk items on Thursday 20 th January 2022."
Stevie Scott, Head of Waste Management for Glasgow City Council, described the decision to suspend the bulk uplift service as regrettable but necessary to protect essential household services during the festive period.
He said: "We are working with the trade unions to ensure that we do everything possible to keep staff safe at work and maintain the city's key cleansing services.
"However, we are seeing rising numbers of staff being required to self-isolate because of this latest wave of covid-19. When combined with other absences through illness and annual leave, it is inevitable that omicron is going to have an impact on service delivery.
"We are very sorry that the bulk uplift service has to be put on hold during the festive period when households do generate additional waste.
"However, we must prioritise our routine collections of general waste and dry, mixed recycling to protect public health and the environment.
"After almost two years of the pandemic we have well established plans and procedures to minimise the spread of covid in the workplace and these have been implemented rapidly again.
"We will keep this situation under constant review to protect services and protect public health."
The council's Household Waste Recycling Centres at Polmadie, Dawsholm, Shieldhall and Queenslie are scheduled to remain open as normal throughout the festive period, with the exception of Christmas Day and New Year's Day when the centres are closed.
