Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has accused an SNP-run council of dispatching cleaners to tidy the streets of Nicola Sturgeon’s constituency shortly before an election photocall he held on Thursday to highlight the pitiful condition.
Mr Sarwar claimed that cleaning workers in Glasgow Southside, which is the First Minister’s constituency, told him they were ordered to do a clean-up operation ahead of his visit to the Govanhill area.
“I met cleansing workers there who were telling me about the huge cuts they’ve seen, not just in terms of staff but also in terms of the investment they’ve had,” he said.
He continued: “They were also telling me about how whenever they hear that there’s going to be a political visit, either from Nicola Sturgeon or when they heard that I was going to be visiting Govanhill today, they were ordered to go and do a cleanup operation the night before.
“Because there’s going to be a politician visiting, they didn’t want it to be a bad site for when the cameras turned up.”
The Daily Telegraph photographed three bin lorries and street cleaners that turned up shortly before Mr Sarwar’s election stop, residents of the area said it was not the normal day for the refuse collections to occur.
Chris Mitchell, the GMB convenor for cleansing in Glasgow, told the Daily Telegraph that the council ordering clean ups ahead of high-profile visits is “common practice” throughout the SNP-run city.
Mr Mitchell said the orders come through Glasgow City Council’s management team, which forces workers to be redirected from planned cleaning schedules and means that planned routes get abandoned.
“Somebody paying council tax won’t get their street cleaned today because they’ve been rerouted – it’s beyond me,” he said, describing the practice as “despicable”.
Mr Mitchell continued: “We’ve been debating with the council and Scottish Government that Glasgow is facing a waste crisis. It’s shocking that when someone high-profile is visiting that they’ll put a sticking plaster over it.
“When he [Anas Sarwar] leaves, that place will be left another two or three weeks.”
A Glasgow City Council spokesperson said: “This didn’t happen. Managers made no such an instruction – and, if anything, Govanhill received a slightly reduced service on Wednesday after crews were evacuated from their depot due to a fire.
“However, the council does have a whistleblowing policy – so, if the person who claims they received this instruction has any evidence of that, we would obviously look into it.”
Editor-in-Chief | Carl D. Pearson has been involved in British politics and media from an early age, with the key knowledge of what it takes to run a news organisation for the 21st century. Mr Pearson, as Editor-in-chief, is responsible for supervising the daily tasks of publishing media and content to UNN’s website and various platforms.
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