First 22 neighbourhood service teams

On 9 May the first 22 neighbourhood service teams (‘buurtserviceteams’) went to work cleaning up the city streets. Armed with oversized vacuum cleaners, garbage pliers and brooms, they began their activities by ridding the Vondelstraat of litter.

The teams are each made up of 11 members with a manager, three employees on the payroll and seven people who will be doing this work as part of an employment reintegration project while keeping their social benefits.

‘This is the way The Hague is working on cleaning up the city’, explained Deputy Mayor Sander Dekker (City Management). Deputy Mayor Henk Kool expressed the wish that employees with social benefits would be able to find work quickly on the regular job market.

The neighbourhood service teams will each be assigned their own neighbourhood which they will have to keep clean on a daily basis. The first 22 teams are already at work in the districts of Scheveningen, Segbroek, Laak, Escamp and Centrum. By the end of 2011 there should be 40 teams actively at work. Another ten will follow in 2012 and by 2013 all 60 teams will be working throughout The Hague.

Work-study programme

The teams fall under the Haags Werkbedrijf. This organisation has been active in cleaning up the city for years, is experienced in reintegrating people into the workforce and has 17 locations throughout The Hague.

Neighbourhood service teams with aldermen Sander Dekker and Henk Kool in action. Photo: Peter van Oosterhout