NICOLA Sturgeon has refused to meet cleansing workers in Glasgow to discuss the city’s rat problem, and accused Anas Sarwar of talking the city down for raising it at Holyrood.
It came as one Glasgow Labour MSP told FMQs that she had rats in her flat.
With world leaders due to arrive in Glasgow for the COP26 climate change summit this weekend, Mr Sarwar raised the city’s cleanliness and readiness.
He said: “Tonnes of waste piling up on our streets, fly-tipping on the rise and over a million rats. Glasgow deserves better.
“So while Nicola Sturgeon lectures the world about the global environment, she is turning a blind eye to the environment Glaswegians are living in every single day.”
He said he would tomorrow meet cleansing workers in Glasgow who are threatening industrial action during the summit, and urged her to hear their experience first hand.
Bin men have reported being attacked and bitten by rats in recent months as the population has surged - as it has across the UK - during the pandemic.
Glasgow’s SNP council leader Susan Aitken this week blamed the legacy of Margaret Thatcher for some of the problems, and said all cities have rats.
The First Minister said she would be working hard to ensure disputes between unions and the council umbrella group Cosla were resolved, before turning on the Labour leader.
Reminding MSPs she lived in Glasgow and represented one of its constituencies, she said: “I don’t shy away from the problems and the challenges that cities like Glasgow - Glasgow is not unique here – face in the times that we live through right now.
“But nor will I stand here and allow Glasgow, one of the greatest cities in the world, to be talked down for political purposes in the way that Anas Sarwar has disgracefully been doing in recent times.”
Mr Sarwar replied: “That was probably a historically out of touch answer from the First Minister. She’s basically saying to Glaswegians, that’s just as good as it gets.”
Glasgow Labour MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy also raised Glasgow’s cleanliness and her own experience of pests.
She said: “As my representative, as my MSP, I ask the First Minister again: please meet with cleansing workers tomorrow and hear from them first hand what is happening.
“I can assure you there are rats in our streets and there are rats in my flat.”
Ms Sturgeon told her: “I don’t shy away – as a resident of and a representative of the city of Glasgow – I don’t shy away from the challenges that the city faces.
“But I do think some of the language that Labour is using about Glasgow, some of the ways in which Labour is seeking to characterise the city of Glasgow, is doing a disservice to the city and to people who live there.
“And they’re doing that for political purposes and not in the interest of the city.”
It is understood Ms Sturgeon will be doing COP26-related events in Glasgow tomorrow.
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