Anger over decision to seek tenders
A decision not to roll over a recycling contract for an organisation that employs 90 disabled Southlanders has resulted in a level of public anger similar to the museum closure, Invercargill city councillors have been told.
Southland’s three territorial councils, through their combined body Wastenet, have decided to put the region’s recycling contract out to tender instead of renewing the contract with Southland DisAbility Enterprises.
Southland DisAbility Enterprises employs about 120 people including about 90 with disabilities to sort the recyclables at its Invercargill plant.
Wastenet has previously said it had been faced with a significant increase in the price wanted by Southland DisAbility Enterprises – how much of an increase is unknown to the public – so has opened the process up to other bidders to test the market.
Nobby Clark, spokesman for the Invercargill Ratepayers Advocacy Group, told city councillors at Tuesday’s council meeting that the Wastenet decision to not renew the contract for Southland DisAbilities had not gone down well.
‘‘You should be aware that a parental online petition has 5000 signatures in under a week and we expect the petition to grow significantly,’’ he said.
The ratepayers group had been getting ‘‘significant feedback’’ and the level of public anger was similar to the museum closure.
Clark said the council appeared to be completely disregarding the social benefit associated with renewing the Southland DisAbility Enterprises contract.
The job gave the disabled workers a sense of belonging and the alternative for many would be to sit at home isolated.
Not everything the council funded should be solely based on a financial spreadsheet, he said.
If that were the case the council would not provide housing for the elderly, it would not have poured more than $1 million into Southland rugby by taking ownership of Rugby Park and it would not have kept the Bluff Transfer Station open, Clark said.
Families of the people with disabilities who work at Southland DisAbility Enterprises have previously vowed to fight the decision to not renew the contract.
Southland DisAbility Enterprises intends to tender for the work to try and keep the contract. The Jones family joined volunteers and other guests to celebrate the fifth birthday of the Ronald McDonald family room at Southland Hospital yesterday.
The four-bedroom home was opened in 2013 to help families feel at home while their children received medical treatment and has been home to 685 families since it opened. The Jones family, from Queenstown, was the first to use the room when their children Hudson and Ivy, now five, were born 10 weeks premature.
Nicky Jones said the staff at the home welcomed her family with open arms, turning a very stressful situation into an incredibly positive experience.
Ronald McDonald House South Island chief executive Mandy Kennedy said the birthday celebration was to say thank you to the more than 40 volunteers, most had been volunteers since the beginning.
‘‘They are the back bone of what we do, and we couldn’t have done this without them.’’
The home has one full-time staff member and the volunteers contributed a lot from cooking food and cleaning to exterior maintenance work, Kennedy said.