Cleaners spend hours a day mopping up rubbish
Rubbish and litter is being scattered in Kununurra parks as quickly as it's being collected, according to the contractor employed to clean it up.
Waste management company Toxfree is hired by the Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley to clean up rubbish left in local parks and public spaces but says the volume of litter in some areas is ridiculous.
Kununurra supervisor Andrew Ogilvie said White Gum Park in particular had become a hotspot in recent weeks, and on a bad day 12 to 15 bags of rubbish are collected in a single morning.
"It has been pretty bad lately and we tend to notice it more towards the end of the week and the last couple weekends have been pretty bad," he said.
"In a lot of cases just a short time after it's cleaned up, the mess is starting to appear again, so the litterbugs are there right behind our guys."
Mr Ogilvie said two cleaners spend about three hours each morning, including on weekends and public holidays, cleaning White Gum Park alone, only to return to find it trashed the following day.
He said other areas cleaned daily by the company, including the grass strip along Messmate Way and the central business district, were also often strewn with litter.
"We bag up the rubbish and we tend to get two to three cubic metres a day," he said.
"We do what we can each morning to make everything look clean and tidy."
Shire president John Moulden said the Shire currently spends about $400,000 each year on cleaning up rubbish and he personally was fed up with the stupidity of it.
"It's a ridiculous way to spend money," he said.
"We are aware that things are abnormally bad, but there are some people in town currently that have no idea what's required."
"It's terrible for other people who do the right thing and we all drive past it every day and it just looks horrible."
Cr Moulden said Shire rangers did patrol parks and issue fines for littering but it was one of many tasks they carried out so they couldn't be there all of the time.
Kununurra Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Jill Williams said businesses were also fed up with the amount of litter around the town.
She said, while some of the problem was seasonal, the chamber would speak with the Shire and police to ensure the scourge was addressed well ahead of the tourist season.
"It is disappointing because that $400,000 a year could be going to different projects to improve the town's facilities," she said.
