The public utility Komunalna Higiena - Skopje says its crews carry out daily manual washing of the micro-locations where municipal waste containers stand, across every Skopje municipality. The washing, they say, happens mostly in the late evening hours, after the containers are emptied.

Skopje residents, meanwhile, are posting photographs.

"In front of buildings 30-28 on Vidoe Smilevski Bato the cleaners have made a stinking puddle that is a potential bomb for all sorts of infections", writes one resident, adding that the side street has not been cleaned since Aerodrom was run by a mayor three terms ago. And asking for an inspector to come out.

What actually got washed

The statement is precise when it comes to specific locations. Ahead of the Dormition of the Mother of God, crews washed the entire area in front of the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the city centre, as well as the surroundings and courtyard of the Dormition monastery in the Matka canyon.

That is true, documented and worth the credit. The problem is the translation from "we washed in front of the churches before the holiday" into "we wash everywhere every day". Those are two different claims, and the second is the one in the statement.

The company adds that it is also continuing machine washing of boulevards and streets with tanker trucks. Nobody claims that is not happening. The question is at what frequency, in which neighbourhoods, and why the gap between the centre and the outskirts is visible enough that residents photograph it.

The holiday as a schedule

There is something recognisable about cleaning being stepped up right before a major religious holiday, and right in front of the churches. It is not wrong - quite the opposite. But when hygiene runs on a calendar instead of a schedule, it is easy to see why a statement that says "every day" is met with disbelief.

Skopje is not complaining about the churches. It is complaining about the leachate sitting around the containers in the side streets where no inspector has passed in years. And while the press releases and the photographs go past each other, the only arbiter left is the nose of whoever walks that pavement tonight.