Here on the coast we have seen a Harley-Davidson bike meet and a Honda, Gold Wing one, but Motril takes it one step further: a scooter for hoovering up dog excrement!

This peculiar acquisition belongs to the cleaning company, Limdeco, which holds the municipal contract for keeping the streets and public buildings clean.

The Chairman of the Administration Board for the publicly owned company, José García Fuentes (the name should sound familiar) inspected the wonder machine, together with councillors from departments with improbable titles.

But let’s just stop the article here and take a quick look a the plurally employed, José García Fuentes: Vice-Mayor of Motril, Chairman of the Mancomunidad, Chairman of Board of the Limdeco cleaning company, Councillor for Sports, Councillor for Tourism and Councillor for Internal Procedure.

The question is, just how much money does he receive from public funds in the form of salaries and expenses? He gets money for heading the board of the cleaning company, Limdeco, he gets his Vice-Mayor salary and one for the Chairman of the Mancomunidad de la Costa Tropical, as well.

Back to the article, this machine was purchased as part of the campaign entitled, No le des la espalda al problema, (Don’t Turn Your Back on the Problem), which was brought into being a couple of months ago to “make pet owners aware of the importance of picking up canine droppings.”

The vehicle called a Moto Canina (dog bike) will be used to hoover up the left excrement along streets and in public squares. The bike will be on patrol from 06.30h and 10.00h when most pet owner take their dogs ‘to do their business.’

The bike is a Honda 125 scooter, with a vacuum cleaner and bin fitted. The secondary motor sucks the excrement up through a tube to the bin, which has disinfectant included.

No mention was made as to exactly how much this vehicle has cost the public purse or how this motorized vehicle will have access to pedestrianized public squares.

Quite possibly the biggest waste of public money since the multiple purchase of petrol-driven leaf blowers for municipal street cleaners

(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)