Millions to be spent on Paris cleanup

– The mayor of Paris said on Sunday the city would spend €1.5 million (about R21 million) to rid the French capital of rats and install more public ashtrays to clean up the city’s streets.

In an interview with Journal du Dimanche weekly, Mayor Anne Hidalgo unveiled a 10-point plan aimed at making cleanliness a “priority”.

The measures include increasing the number of sanitation workers and health inspectors, expanding the hours for garbage pickup, and urging restaurants and buildings to provide more ashtrays at entrances and exit points.

Municipal workers collect more than 150 tons of cigarette butts every year in Paris.

“We already allot €500 million a year for cleanliness and waste management ... and the situation has improved,” she said. “But it is clear that Paris is not yet perfectly clean.

“I want to speed up, increase efforts. It is a top priority,” she said.

“In a civilised city, cleanliness must be everybody’s responsibility,” she said, calling for a change in the mindsets and habits of residents.

“In Tokyo, everything is clean and yet there are no dustbins because people wait to get home before throwing away their waste.”

Paris had come under fire in December for allegedly dragging its feet before it launched what has been dubbed its “war on rats”.

Most of the criticism was centred on Hidalgo and the city’s environmental health services chief.

The city’s failure to keep the streets clean was also a sticking point for residents, as a scathing commentary at the time in the conservative daily Le Figaro targeting the eco-friendly mayor revealed.

“New in the Parisian cityscape: filthy streets because of the total and persistent disarray in the cleaning services,” wrote author and politician Serge Federbusch.

The Republican group on the Council of Paris, however, scoffed at Hidalgo’s measures.

“Anne Hidalgo is attempting to short-circuit her opposition by announcing certain placebo measures, but there is absolutely nothing new,” said the group.

The Republicans said an investigative commission will begin to study the city’s cleanliness problem in May, suggesting that only then can the city come up with the right policies to “know how to remake Paris” into “a clean city”. – AFP