The AFC is urging government to increase the salary of school cleaners to a minimum of $40,000 per month effective from January 1, 2013, and to start payment now even as the administration works to establish a national minimum wage.
“Government should not delay payment pending approval of a national minimum wage,” the AFC said in a press release. The party noted that school cleaners are among the lowest paid working poor, almost all of whom are women and single parents. It noted that these workers have been receiving just over $15,000.000 (US$75) per month for a six-hour working day.
The AFC said it was informed that since 2003, this salary remained fixed and did not go up with annual increases in the public sector, even though cleaning is considered a public service employment. Cleaners have said that the monthly salary is based on the number of working hours per month, irrespective of the size of the schools.
The party also noted that the Ministry of Public Works issued a circular on the duties of a cleaner, which include sweeping the floors, cleaning window sills, walls, furniture and offices; cleaning and disinfecting toilets and sinks; providing lavatories with toilet paper, soap and towel; mopping floors once weekly and washing office towels.
The circular recognised that the job of cleaners is “unpleasant” as these workers are exposed to “toilet stench” and to dust and dirt, the party said. As a result, it is demanding justice for school cleaners.
Prior to the 2011 elections, then President Bharrat Jagdeo had committed to ensuring that the workers’ salaries were upgraded to at least the minimum wage, after they had staged a protest outside of his office and the Finance Ministry lamenting that their paltry salaries were not enough to meet basic needs.
After the polls, Head of the Presidential Secretariat and Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon had said that he would check on the status of the assurance given by the former president. However, he also noted that salary increases and other monetary issues would have to be dealt with by the relevant employment agencies and the Finance Ministry, and that protocol would have to be followed before he could advise on the salary status of workers.
Later, Luncheon announced that government would work to establish a national minimum wage for workers both in the public and private sector. At that time the public sector minimum wage was set at $37,400 while the private sector’s is varied. “This initiative is an improvement, it is the ultimate improvement that binds employers across the scale to subscribe to a minimum wage no employee would earn less than, not just sectors but no employee,” he had said.
School cleaners like Drupatee Mohan, who earns $17,400 per month, have told Stabroek News that her salary is not enough to live on. “I am 59 and have no husband and children to take care of me. I here all day, cleaning after these picknies and get seventeen thousand and something whole month… What can that fuh me?” Mohan, the Cotton Tree Nursery School cleaner, had told this newspaper.
