The South Devon Green Party has begun a campaign to highlight the outsourcing of essential public services to the private sector.
They point to the waste sector in Torbay in the waste sector. They say, that without the consent of council tax payers and as part of a Joint Venture Contract worth £130 million lasting 10 years, Torbay’s waste collection has been outsource to private contractors, whose remit is to provide profit for their investors, with council tax payer providing the income.
Where once increased recycling could have seen an increase in revenue for the residents of Torbay, the profits made from the sale of our resources being recycled will leave the authority. Prices for recyclables have and will increase further, yet any feed back become another’s profit.
Dr Sam Moss, Green Party candidate for Torbay told the PRSD: “Rather than seeing increased effectiveness, this scheme and higher recycling rates are all suffering from gross inefficiency, it’s an and outrageous situation.
“Profit-motivated arrangements are further eroding our publically owned assets and services and importantly in direct opposition to Green Party policy which puts people before profits, keeps public services in public hands and is hostile to needless privatisation. Amidst the brouhaha we feel not enough has been made of the principle of the loss of our public services.
“Disappointingly, rather than working hard itself to improve Torbay Council’s own recycling rates and more importantly decrease the quantity of waste in the system private interests have been chosen over public ones turning local waste management into a commodities market rather than an environmental responsibility.”
Green Party Devon County Councillor Paula Black, who has recently been working with Torbay councillors over waste, told the PRSD: “I have receive many calls from across the Torbay area asking why such a complicated system of collection has been evolved.
“We can recycle up to 90 per cent of our products, yet local communities are being excluded. You have no say in the details of the decades’ long contracts and political arrangements that make private interests predominate over the public interests of your local community.
“Your local Green Party will beginning this campaign to fight against decisions in waste that do not benefit the local community, rather than spending huge amounts of funds on new contracts to collect and burn waste so many more options are available that were never considered.”
Sam said: “If the people of Torbay were treated as citizens instead of consumers or disposers, of course this would never have gone ahead. This should have been at the heart of waste management policy in the first place.
“The South Devon Green Party wants to make it easy to do the right thing and will be working hard to explore with our local communities the alternatives to what is happening in Torbay in regard to waste management. Those which will benefit us all, not the few, and provide a genuine social premium.”
(from a press release)
(image: Dr Sam Moss)
• The South Devon Green Pary with be at Paignton Green Saturday, September 25 from noon.
Come and enjoy Devon – book a hotel and get away!
Related posts:
- Greens call for weekly food waste collections to diffuse local bin row The Green Party in Exeter is calling for the council...
- Bankers’ bonuses and the realities of living in the South West by South Devon Greens The Green Party has hit out at the Coaltion Government's...
- Are there any Greens in Central Devon? The Mid-Devon Green Party is looking for candidates for the...
