African street car-cleaners meet their Asian match

The lucrative car-wash business in the city of Jeddah, mainly dominated by illegal African residents on streets across the city, now has new competitors from Asian countries.
On Jeddah’s busy King Fahd street, also known as ‘Sitteen’ (60th) street in the Sharafiya area, the area under the flyovers have become a budding ground for illegal Asian residents to wash cars.
Lower prices than those of their African counterparts and parking space are also contributing to the flourishing of this new business.
The business of manual car-washing in Jeddah has been monopolized by Africans, especially those from Somalia, Chad and Ghana. Roadsides are demarcated by them, where workers from other nationalities don’t dare to tread. Each group, consisting of six to a dozen people, work as a single unit to “control” their areas and prevent others from entering into them.
Starting from the Souk Bawadi in the north to the Karantina area in the south, the same domination prevails. However, in the Sharafiya area, which has a concentration of Indian expatriates, Bangaldeshi cleaners have emerged.
These cleaners have also formed groups and each group is responsible for certain stretches of road under the flyover. Unlike African cleaners, these Asians clean medium-range vehicles such as vans, trucks and school buses. A four-wheel vehicle is charged at SR 5, while vehicles such as vans and trucks are charged at anywhere between SR 10 to SR 20, which is cheaper compared to their African counterparts.
The entry of Asian expatriates — who were earlier confined to residential units where they were employed as watchmen — into the car washing business, has now turned into a massive large scale operation that has forced African cleaners to reduce their prices.
There are also hundreds of illegal workers who are waiting under flyovers to be arrested by immigration authorities and who want to be deported. These workers do not clean vehicles, though they spend much of their time playing games or sleeping, as they are reluctant to clean cars. Residents with valid residence permits, however, are happily indulging in the car-washing business.
The street car-washing business is an offence for which Jeddah Police has arrested and deported 257 expatriates over the last year, according to Jeddah Police crime statistics. The Jeddah Municipality is also carrying out routine inspections and confiscating buckets, bicycles and motorbikes used by cleaners. It is also conducting raids along with passport and police officials to apprehend those engaging in this business.
Alam Mian, a cleaner, said “we are making daily ends meet, but when our turn comes with police and passport control, we don’t know how we will survive.” He also said that “all of us live in similar conditions and we share the business as well as the risks.”
The area under the flyover on Sitteen Street lies opposite to Indian shops and was once used by bachelors as a gathering spot in the evening. The liquid used for cleaning is causing damage to road surfaces and potholes because of the cleaning water poured onto the roadside. The residual pool of water, which remains after the washing of cars, is also a breeding ground for mosquitos and insects.