The May session of the City Council was dominated by a heated discussion about the cleanliness of our city. Before it began, however, the councillors observed a minute of silence in memory of the recently deceased Wojciech Bogumił Krzywdziński, an outstanding Bolesławiec psychologist and councillor during the second and third terms.
The issue of rubbish in Bolesławiec was raised by City Council Chairwoman Janina Piestrak-Babijczuk. The councillor asked Grażyna Strzyżewska, head of the Municipal Affairs Department, who, on behalf of the City Office, was responsible for ensuring that Bolesławiec remained orderly. The chairwoman admitted that she had not noticed anyone supervising and checking this, “as in the old days, when an employee would walk around and look. Ah! Asnyka Street is dirty, the gutters have not been cleaned, there is rubbish everywhere.” “And now you can’t see a living soul, and there is hardly any municipal police either, so no one supervises this,” the indignant councillor said. She added, however, that our “city is beautiful; it just needs to be looked after” and that she would like employees of the Municipal Affairs Department to walk around the city and intervene at least twice a week.
The issue of overflowing recycling containers was raised by Stanisław Andrusieczko, a LiD councillor. He wanted to know who was responsible for the fact that paper was not being collected. “We councillors are suffering because they tell us that a councillor is only supposed to listen and say nothing,” Andrusieczko said. Since the collection of sorted waste is the responsibility of the Municipal Communal Services Company, councillor Jarosław Kowalski spoke up. He noted that “the company has one recycling truck,” which had recently been taken in for repairs. MZGK collects waste from several hundred locations. It is not always able to remove it on time. The company also intends to set aside funds to purchase another vehicle. Jarosław Kowalski added that there was no problem with waste being dumped beside containers in the city centre and that the issue mainly concerned residents of single-family homes. Department head Strzyżewska said that waste dumped beside containers was treated as illegal dumping, which was removed at the municipality’s expense. Therefore, we all pay for it.
Councillor Józef Burniak said that the point was not to look for someone to blame: “The greatest success of Bolesławiec’s residents is that our inhabitants have embraced waste sorting as their own.” According to Burniak, the greatest danger was that, because rubbish was not collected on time, “people would lose faith in the point of sorting waste.”
Hubert Prabucki, a councillor representing Ziemia Bolesławiecka, brought the councillors together by reminding them that every member of the City Council had MZGK’s telephone number. Councillor Prabucki admitted that he had called the Municipal Communal Services Company several times about this issue. MZGK always intervened after such a call. Janina Piestrak-Babijczuk expressed hope that Bolesławiec would soon be clean.
The session also addressed the teachers’ strike. “Both kindergartens and schools were supposed to join the strike,” said Krystyna Boratyńska, head of the Social Affairs Department. However, before joining the protest, “a whole series of doubts and questions” arose, the department head admitted. Doubts could arise, for example, regarding a kindergarten teacher who wanted to join the strike despite being on health leave. “We consulted this with the legal advisers of the Polish Teachers’ Union,” Boratyńska assured. Just before the strikes, a meeting of school and institution directors with lawyers was held on Monday morning. Among other things, the directors learned what consequences their employees might face if they joined the protest. In Bolesławiec, only two schools took part in the nationwide strike: Primary School No. 2, where two people participated in the protest, and Primary School No. 5, where 17 teachers went on strike.
(GA/KG report)