IMCOM (Europe) trims cleaning contracts on Army bases

[unhappycamper]

http://www.stripes.com/polopoly_fs/1.107630.1276859282!/image/171140513.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_240/171140513.jpg

Spc. Joshua Sandlin with the Wiesbaden Soldier Medical Readiness Center in Wiesbaden, Germany, takes time from helping customers to mop the office floors Thursday. Installation Management Command-Europe is hoping to save $2 million annually by eliminating cleaning contracts for units that are smaller than a brigade.


IMCOM trims cleaning contracts on Army bases
By Mark Patton
Stars and Stripes
Published: June 18, 2010

WIESBADEN, Germany — Soldiers will be spending less time honing combat skills and more time scrubbing toilets and mopping hallways after Installation Management Command-Europe recently made cuts to its cleaning contracts.

Until now, local civilian contractors had provided services such as taking out trash, sweeping offices, mopping hallways and cleaning bathrooms at most buildings on Army bases in Europe. But IMCOM-Europe has started a new policy that eliminates cleaning services for office buildings that are occupied by units below a brigade level and reduces contracts for other buildings in a move officials say they hope will save $2 million annually.

Some soldiers say the cleaners will be missed.

“I think it’s better to have the cleaners, so the soldiers can focus on deployment and training,” said Staff Sgt. David Schwartz with the 557th Medical Company in Wiesbaden. “The soldiers need to be focused on training, and I gotta send them to clean the bathrooms. Sometimes it’s a morale killer.”

U.S. Army Garrison Wiesbaden had 29 cleaning contracts completely cut, most of them on the airfield.

[msongs]

1. the military should be doing all its own cleaning, cooking, etc - not paying war profiteers nt

[proteus_lives]

2. +1

You know who benefited from the end of the Draft? Companies.

[Raineyb]

3. Good. Soldiers are supposed to be taking care of stuff like this.

Civilian contractors are a liability should an enemy overrun the base. They're a body to protect, a soldier doing that work can in theory pick up a gun and help defend the base.

Not to mention every job has crap assignments why does the Staff Sgt. think his area should be any different? Before the rush to enrich cronies privatize everything that is what the military did time to go back to that.

The Pentagon is sucking up too much of our god-damned tax dollars as it is.