Contractors

Every large organisation uses contractors for something.  The photos below were taken at Bicentennial Park at Homebush, and show a horticultural contractor doing some work on a garden bed.

In my experience of using contractors, all they will care about is the work that they have been contracted to carry out.  If the toilet block to the left of this photo was a burned-out pile of rubble when they arrived, they'd probably shrug their shoulders, figure that somebody else would take care of it, and get on with digging out the weeds.

That's not a slur on this particular company - it's just the mindset that contracting brings.  A contractor is responsible for a certain, narrowly defined function within their area of expertise, and that's what they concentrate on doing.  Anything outside that function is somebody else's problem, and since they are not employees of the organisation responsible for the entire park (in this instance), they probably don't feel much in the way of ownership of anything in the park.  

Even if they did notice a pile of smoking rubble where the toilets used to be, and they thought that it should be reported, they probably wouldn't know who to report it to as they are outside of the normal chain of command for this organisation.  They might deal with a contract manager in the Finance Department who has no connection to the manager of the gardens, let alone the manager of the public facilities.

What members of the public need to understand is that just because they see workers beavering away at a site next to a smoking pile of rubble, they should not assume that those workers will feel the need to report the problem, or even that they have any idea as to whom they should report it to.  

In other words, if you see a problem, report it.  Lift that finger and put it to work.  Don't assume that somebody else will take care of it.