Opposition councillors have criticised a £200,000 plan to clean up Dundee city centre saying more needs to be done to tackle the issue of cleanliness.
Local authority leader John Alexander confirmed last month that additional funding had been earmarked to go towards improving the city.
The money will be spent on five measures that will “positively contribute” to Dundee’s environment and make it more attractive.
These are:
- £65k will be spent on recruiting four temporary street cleaning staff on a six month contract. They will be deployed in the city centre.
- £30k will be spent on the external hire of a sweeping contractor. This is a city wide initiative.
- £30k will be spent on hiring a deck scrubber to be deployed in the city centre and district shopping centres.
- £30k will go towards supporting community clean ups, citywide skip provision and waste disposal.
- £45k will go towards the purchase of litter bins for the city.
Short-term solution
But the plan has been criticised by some opposition councillors, who instead called for the creation of a steering group to look at long-term approaches to city centre cleanliness.
Speaking at a climate, environment, and biodiversity committee meeting on Monday, councillor Fraser Macpherson said: “Short-term hire of equipment or temporary jobs – these people will get six months work and then that will be them.
“One-off community clean-ups really isn’t the long term solution here.”
Broughty Ferry councillor Craig Duncan added: “We are not claiming to have all of the answers but what I would like to see is an increase in the depth and breadth of the council’s capability to keep on top of things.”
Motion rejected
The Liberal Democrat councillors tabled a motion to have a working group established and chaired by the executive director of neighbourhood services to spearhead more long-term ideas to tackle the mess within the city.
But this was rejected by committee convener Heather Anderson, who labelled the proposal “insulting”.
“I’m very conscious of how busy officers are and the idea that they are not thinking of long-term solutions is frankly a bit insulting”, she said.
“We are always trying to think of long-terms solutions within the resources that we have.”
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