Street cleaners refuse to wear life-jackets to empty bins on waterways
Excerpt from Galway City Tribune – April 13 2012
By Dara Bradley
Galway City Council workers refusing to wear life-jackets when emptying rubbish bins near the city’s waterways has led to the removal of those bins – and an increase in littering along the canal and river.
The decision to remove waterside rubbish bins from the city for ‘health and safety’ reasons because workers wouldn’t wear life-jackets when emptying the refuse has also been slammed as “daft”.
And, as a result of the lack of bins, the “disgraceful” state of the city’s waterways is creating a negative impression of Galway among tourists, a City Councillor claimed this week.
Cllr. Billy Cameron (Labour) has accused Galway City Council and the director of the Lough Corrib Navigation Trustees, Kevin Swift, of “utter neglect of and disregard for” the city’s waterway network.
The littering of the city’s canals and waterways over the Easter Bank Holiday was so bad that Cllr. Cameron said he was “ashamed of my city”.
Cllr. Cameron has been told by a source in City Hall that the bins along the waterways were removed in the interest of health and safety.
“Have you ever heard anything so daft? This takes all the biscuits in the tin. The ultimate decision was based on the fact that the workers refused to wear life-jackets when emptying the bins. Have we in Galway lost the plot?”
A spokesperson for the Council said its cleaning and littering regime remains in place. He said littering was not the sole responsibility of the City Council – people need to act responsibly by not littering. Throwing litter into hard to reach places, such as the canals and waterways, obviously makes it more difficult to clean and it therefore takes more time, he said.