As the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic continues, public awareness of hygiene has heightened. While everyone is busy scrambling to buy masks and cleaning supplies, tidying their homes, and worrying about material shortages for frontline medical personnel, there is another group of “anti-epidemic heroes” working tirelessly behind the scenes to clean the whole of Hong Kong: our cleaning workers.
A cleaner in the Eastern District, who starts her early shift at 7:00 AM, puts on a mask and gloves as early as 6:00 AM to begin clearing trash. She manages an entire refuse collection point single-handedly, which holds over a dozen large garbage bins. She quickly tosses more than a dozen bags of rubbish into the large waste containers so that the garbage truck driver can collect them on schedule.
“I’ve been doing this for five years. Every day is the same – I manage this place all by myself and keep everything in perfect order. My boss trusts me completely!”
The refuse collection point she personally maintains is completely free of foul odors.
When asked whether she worries about a shortage of protective gear and insufficient epidemic prevention support, she replied:
“I’m working here every day, and after get-off work I don’t have time to queue up to buy masks. The ones whose prices have been hiked up are too expensive for me to afford, so there’s nothing I can do. Dirty water splashes onto my mask, and the garbage stinks. I use the exact same mask all day long until I go home, and the next morning I wear the very same one back to work before I finally get to change into a new one.”
Each cleaning worker is allocated only one mask per day. Some employees even wash their masks themselves or place tissue paper inside the masks to reuse them for two to three days. Many workers are afraid that sewage during work will wet their masks, and they worry that a lack of protective supplies makes them vulnerable to the infection. Frontline cleaning staff working on the streets, at refuse collection points, and in public toilets are exposed to environments full of germs. With material shortages, the situation is deeply concerning.
To support frontline cleaning workers in their efforts to fight the epidemic for all of Hong Kong, Moovup distributed a total of 10,000 masks across multiple refuse collection points in various districts, handing out 20 to 30 masks to each worker. It is hoped that during this difficult time, the people of Hong Kong can care for the hardworking cleaners who stand steadfastly at their frontline posts, practice good personal hygiene, and fight the epidemic together.
