Mr President!
My private note addressed to you outside the official press report (about the fact that cleanliness is not being properly maintained in many stairwells of the cooperative’s buildings, and that some effective system of inspection and supervision is needed) produced no result. This means either that you have no influence over your subordinates or—something I find harder to believe—that you do not respect people’s voices and press law.
Please believe me: this issue has truly exhausted both me and the cooperative members—readers who write to the newspaper without result and who are equally unsuccessfully demanding cleanliness in the estate administrations.
The issue keeps returning like a boomerang, apparently at the SM’s own request, because yet another report was ignored, and I simply no longer intend to accept living in dirt in a way that insults my civilized dignity. Besides, for what purpose and for what reason? I regularly pay the charges imposed on me by the SM—not at all small given my pension income—and thus fulfill my obligations toward the SM. The other side, however, treats its obligations less responsibly. After a note appeared in Głos Bolesławca at the beginning of September criticizing your not very reliable response to a report—with specific indications—about the improper functioning of the estate administration (the matter throughout concerns supervision and control of cleanliness maintenance), I felt briefly satisfied, because a few days after the note the stairwell was washed. Truly. Admittedly, the water and cloth once again skipped the windows that had not been washed for several years (!); please visit our low thresholds sometime and you will see that I am not making anything up—but it became somewhat cleaner.
My joy, however, turned into renewed stress after two weeks, and after a month I found that everything had returned “to normal.” Since then—the beginning of September—until today, October 22, when I am submitting this material for publication, the stairwell has not been washed, and sweeping has once again been taking place “intermittently.”
In view of the above, I ask you to publicly answer the following questions:
- How often should a stairwell be swept and washed according to cooperative regulations?
- Are administration managers required to check the effectiveness of the work performed by those cleaning stairwells? (If they do so, they should probably undergo periodic eyesight examinations.)
- Is it not possible to establish some effective system of supervision or simply replace negligent people with reliable ones? (Bolesławiec has a record number of people looking for work.)
- Is it not possible to entrust the cleaning to the residents themselves in exchange for reducing the charges, at least where cooperative cleaning is merely a fiction? Is it not possible to display information in stairwells about the frequency of washing and sweeping and provide the names of those responsible for cleanliness and order?
- Are any disciplinary sanctions applied for poor performance of cleaning duties?
I would also like to ask you, as a lawyer, whether there is any law that would enable me to enforce the SM’s fulfillment of its basic obligations toward me. I openly admit that, using the legal grounds you provide me with, I will continue to pursue my rights until cleanliness and tidiness prevail in my stairwell—and in the stairwells of the readers who write to me. I want nothing more. In conclusion, I would like to express my respect and appreciation to all the women (and men) who clean and who, despite the administration’s improper supervision and the defective system governing this area of cooperative activity, perform their duties reliably, with their innate sense of cleanliness and precision. I emphasize this clearly because my letter is not intended as a “witch hunt,” nitpicking, ridicule, or a refusal to recognize the SM’s good areas of activity.
As proof of my sincere intentions, I ask readers not to write for some time about negative matters, but instead to point out examples worthy of imitation. I will be most pleased to write about clean stairwells and about the women (and men) who keep them clean. I ask the Local Sanitary and Epidemiological Station, as well as the councillors and members of the relevant Municipal Council committee, to take an interest in this letter. I am convinced that joint, systematic action for order and cleanliness by everyone concerned will benefit us all (and our health) and will make our city beautiful not only in terms of its market-square façades, but also in the places most closely connected with our everyday lives.
Franciszek Uściński—you know my address