By Evie Andreou
LAKATAMIA has the lowest fees for garbage collection in Nicosia district, its mayor Loucas Iatrou said on Wednesday responding to trade union PEO’s accusations that his municipality was squandering tax-payers’ money by not using its own workers and hiring, instead, the services of a private contractor.
Iatrou told the Cyprus Mail that according to their own study, it costs more than double to use municipal workers to collect garbage than outsource to private hands.
“The study showed that it will cost us €1m per year to use municipal workers to do the job, compared to the €450,000 if we hire a private company,” Iatrou said.
“We pay the private company €22 per ton for garbage collection, while it costs Nicosia municipality that uses its own workers, €95 per ton,” he said.
Simos Eftychiou of PEO’s semi-state employees’ division SIDIKEK is sceptical about the mayor’s refusal to use municipal workers.
He said that according to the contract with the private company, the municipality provides the garbage trucks, pays for fuel and the for the trucks’ maintenance, while the company only provides the staff.
Iatrou said that he cannot take municipal workers from other services for garbage collection and leave them short staffed, but even if he did, it would still be more costly.
Eftychiou, however, said that according to his estimates the municipality has more employees than it needs, compared to other Nicosia municipalities that have the same budget as Lakatamia and on the fact that in the last seven years the municipality has hired a large number of new employees.
“Both us (PEO) and the SEK trade union had objected to this excessive hiring by the municipality in the last seven years,” he said.
Eftychiou also said that Lakatamia is the only municipality among the ten in Nicosia district that refuses to participate in a joint municipal service for garbage collection.
Nicosia municipalities that have garbage trucks, Eftychiou said, have offered to rent their services to the rest of the municipalities that do not, thus, keeping the money within the municipalities instead of hiring private companies.
