My TakeStreet cleaners and MTR staff are unsung heroes – and victims – of unrest
- Those left to clear up mess after months of violent protest are exposed to danger and expected to perform additional duties with little reward
While young people fight for a noble cause called THEIR FUTURE, they may pause to consider who’s paying the price for their actions in the present. Now everyone has been affected, but I will single out two groups who have been especially victimised: street cleaners and MTR workers.
Thousands of elderly street cleaners on minimum wage have to clean up after them every weekend – broken glass, burnt-out rubbish bins, discarded umbrellas, goggles and masks and debris of all sorts. Many have to brave the smell of tear gas early in the morning as they work to clean up the city.
The staff of MTR stations have to work extra shifts overnight to repair damaged railings, control rooms, security cameras, smashed windows, broken gates and ticket machines.
Almost 90 per cent of MTR stations have been vandalised, many repeatedly. Worst of all is that staff have been targeted and beaten up, some seriously, by rioters. Protesters may be angry with decisions made by MTR managers, but that’s not the fault of ordinary station staff who bear the brunt of their attacks and harassment.
But I don’t just blame our misguided and often violent youth; MTR executives and senior government officials are equally at fault, if not more so.
The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department is exploiting elderly cleaners to make them perform extra and potentially dangerous clean-up work, all under the misguided policy of keeping the streets clean. They therefore allow contractors to force cleaners, who have virtually no labour protection, to perform additional duties with little or no extra compensation.
Under such extraordinary circumstances after three months of continuous unrest, people cannot expect to have clean streets after a night of mayhem.