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What would we do without them?

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Hygiene workers do the general public a favour by maintaining the cleanliness and pleasantness of public spaces despite the often dirty and dangerous nature of their jobs. Theirs is the nobler cause, says Jasmine Tea.

sulekha.com

Climbing upstairs to my first floor flat, I thought,”Thank God, for the cleaner!” This is not a posh place but kept neat, tidy and clean by a cleaner employed by the apartments Management Office of our blocks. All residents, including tenants contribute a small sum for the upkeep and cleanliness of these four-storey blocks. Keeping a public place clean is not a pleasant job.

This brings to mind the scores of cleaners and blue-collar workers, some being foreign workers, who carry out so many manual tasks to maintain a hygienic and pleasant environment in so many public places like hospitals, shopping malls, bus terminuses, public toilets and roads. Garbage collectors also fall into the hygiene maintenance category, having to face stench and putrefying, nauseating piles of wet mushy organic waste, food packaging, disposable sanitary wear like soiled diapers and anything that is lobbed into the large garbage receptacle through the chute.

More disgustingly, some people think that they are entitled to mess the place so the cleaners and garbage collectors have to clean up after them. Rubbish is simply thrown anywhere and everywhere. They seem to think that the hygiene workers have too little work to do and so must be unreasonably exploited. Who do they think they are? The ‘swollen headed tauke’ (boss) taxpayers who forget that they are actually dependent on these humble blue-collar workers to maintain their health and respectability.

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I have frequently watched, with much revulsion, the way in which these blue-collar hygiene workers are treated, and I am certain that they suffer in silence because they need these ill-paying and totally exploitative jobs to keep their own, and their dependants’ body and soul together.

Once I was sitting in the Sungai Nibong Express Bus Terminal in Penang and observed a foreign hygiene worker clearing rubbish out of the bins around the bus terminus waiting area into some big black plastic bin bags. Whoever his contractor employer was had not provided him with any protective clothing, or even gloves, uniform or face mask. He had to clear the dirty, germ ridden bins with his bare-hands and a blackened rag that didn’t look very clean. He probably had no choice in the matter, even if he had asked for these necessities to do the job.

Such employers are likely to retort, “Accept these conditions or leave.” These are the sort of employers who want everything for nothing, and see it as normal practice to treat the worker like a machine. Once broken-down, readily replaceable. I wonder, if the slipper was on the other foot, whether they would be as resilient as the workers they ill-treat and exploit in this way?

In another instance, as I was walking past an upmarket shop in Pulau Tikus, I saw another foreign employee, who had apparently turned up to start his new job. He was well, though not formally, dressed and stood listening as a man (apparently his new boss) said something to him. The very next second, I saw him having to squat down on the side-walk and pick up some rubbish thrown near a pillar with his bare hands and deposit the rubbish in a nearby bin. His expression of surprise and disappointment at this apparent humiliation was unmistakable. It was degrading. It was hard not to feel pity for the foreign worker and embarrassment and disgust that he should suffer such treatment from a Malaysian employer.

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There have been so many incidences of ill-treatment not only of foreign workers but of workers in general, but despite the “Oohs” and “Ahhs” expressed by many middle- and upper-class readers of these reports, this same public has yet to learn that workers are human beings with dignity and rights to be respected.

In an attempt to talk to someone about the non-supply of protective clothing, which employers should rightly supply to these hygiene workers, the response received was a glib and dismissive one, that the worker should purchase these necessities for their own use, with their own money. This was really nauseating and the conversation lapsed into silence, though I was fuming at the obvious ignorance and lack of humanity of the speaker. Did he think that people with mega bucks come to Malaysia to take up such jobs, as if they had nothing else to do?

Many Malaysians seem unaware that although they are the employers, they have to rely on these workers without whom their lives won’t be as easy, and their businesses won’t thrive. It is not the employer who does the worker a favour by filling the vacancy, but the worker who is doing the employer a favour by submitting to such treatment in the circumstances, for the employer’s own benefit and profit, usually for low pay, slave-labour conditions and odd working hours.

Hygiene workers do the general public a favour by maintaining the cleanliness and pleasantness of public spaces despite the often dirty and dangerous nature of their jobs. Theirs is the nobler cause. What would we do without them? Live in a DUMP?

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Source: shannanjp.blogspot.com

The views expressed in Aliran's media statements and the NGO statements we have endorsed reflect Aliran's official stand. Views and opinions expressed in other pieces published here do not necessarily reflect Aliran's official position.

AGENDA RAKYAT - Lima perkara utama
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charleskiwi
30 Oct 2012 8.39am

Your above example is just like comparing the present watchdog in Putrajaya pretending to keep Malaysia clean and tidy as cleaners. They are the real causes of how unclean and dangerous Malaysia is in, they even try to present to the world how democratic they are when they are in fact wolves in sheep clothing. One simple question for them, where is all the wealth of the nation ? When are the Malays going to realize Umno is the real culprit and all the wealths of the nation are in … private accounts in foreign banks. They are using the name of helping the Malays to make themselves multi millionaires or even billionaires. NEP or NEM aim is not to help Umno warriors to become filthy rich. It was and still is to help the millions of poor Malays to be able to get themselves out of poverty. The morons in Umno, just like shenanigan Mahathir(‘s) family are now filthy rich … … Just ask yourself one simple question, why are there so many, in fact I should really say, why are there still so many… Read more »

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