Hong Kong’s lowly paid elderly toilet cleaners suffer in silence (and stench) as city struggles with dirty public loos
- Tender system for lowest bidder in cleaning contracts and lack of public education clogging up efforts to improve embarrassing situation
- Bad maintenance and lack of job welfare for cleaners raise scepticism over government’s HK$600 million bid to flush away issue
The trick to getting rid of the stench, toilet cleaner Mei says, is to use one part bleach to two parts water. Splashing the potent mix everywhere is the first thing she does when she starts work each morning.
“I’ve been told not to use this much bleach because it’s bad for health, but how else would you get rid of the smell?” the 69-year-old grandmother asks.
Mei, who prefers not to give her full name, has been cleaning a public toilet in Happy Valley for almost five years. She works for one of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department’s five cleaning contractors.
All 799 public toilets under the department’s supervision are maintained by contract workers like Mei.
Working in a public toilet is far more challenging than her previous job as a school janitor.
She spends about 10 hours a day in a public toilet, and says users with bowel problems sometimes soil the floor or even handrails in cubicles. “I need to wipe down every nook and cranny with bleach.”
Despite Mei’s valiant efforts, public toilets are usually the last resort for many Hongkongers because of the appalling reputation of such facilities for being damp, mucky, faulty and foul-smelling.
In an attempt to address these problems, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po promised funding for the department to refurbish about 240 public toilets to improve their ventilation, and enhance cleanliness and hygiene. The plan will be executed in phases over five years, and is expected to cost more than HK$600 million (US$76.4 million).