Cleaners exposed to COVID-19

Over 12,000 cleaners in Dhaka city and several thousands in the districts are exposed to the COVID-19 risk as they are compelled to perform their work without proper safety measures in this time of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Leaders of cleaners said that majority of the cleaners collected wastes from houses and disposed them in dumping yards while others worked at hospitals, markets and so on.

They demanded occupational safety as well as risk allowances like other professionals who are working in the prevailing risky time.

Dhaka South City Corporation chief executive officer  Shah Mohammad Imdadul Haque told New Age that they urged the ministry to incorporate cleaners in the list who would get risk allowances declared by prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

City corporations scavengers union leaders said that at least 15 of the cleaners of two city corporations in Dhaka were infected with COVID-19 while a female cleaner died of the disease that infected 10,929 and killed 183 people till Tuesday in Bangladesh.

Beside the city corporations cleaners, there are over two thousand cleaners in the two cities who collect wastes directly from houses and provide van service privately on contact.

Russel Rana, 12, one of the cleaners who provide van service under a contactor in Mohammadpur of the capital, one of the hardest hit areas by COVID-19 in the city.

Russel collects wastes from the houses of the area daily along with three to five fellow workers.

‘We have to collect wastes without safety measures even from the houses of confirmed [COVID-19] patients while in quarantine,’ he said.

Due to coronavirus infections many roads and areas in residential areas were locked down.

Dhaka North City Corporation scavengers union general secretary Ismail Hossain said that the city corporation provided 2,000 sets of PPE — with gloves, masks, gumboot and one bottle of hand sanitiser — to the cleaners but these were very insufficient and not user-friendly.

But, he said, they have 2,500 regular cleaners, adding that the PPEs are not suitable to use in the sun.

He said that he could not collect information about all the cleaners but he learnt that one female cleaner of Ward 35 died of the infection last week. DSCC scavengers union general secretary Abdul Latif said that they were not given any PPE but the authority provided them with enough gloves, masks and boots.

He said that roughly 15 cleaners in the city corporation were infected with the COVID-19 virus so far although he was not aware of all the cleaners.

He said that coronavirus patients were identified in two of the 11 cleaners’ colonies creating panic among the cleaners as the colonies were densely populated.

Zakir Hossain, chief executive of Nagorik Udyog, a non-governmental organisation that works for the rights of people, said that the cleaners who worked for the city corporations, WASA and hospitals were carrying out their duty at health risk.

He said that many cleaners were outsourced meaning that they were not covered by any social security.

Kalabagan police sub-inspector Monsur Manik said that seeing waste collectors without mask and any other safety gears, he had distributed several hundred masks among them.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net