New strategy to avert strike by cleaners

The Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs is tendering cleaning contracts in major cities to more than one company to reduce dependency on a particular company in case of disputes where striking workers have caused garbage pileups particularly in the holy city of Makkah.
Municipal and Rural Affairs Minister Prince Mansour bin Miteb has instructed the municipalities to award cleaning contracts to more than one company to prevent "unforeseen trouble" in the future.
The cleaning of Makkah has witnessed repeated strikes by South Asian expatriate workers, mainly from Bangladesh owing to the non-renewal of iqamas and the contracting company falling in the red category for not fulfilling the mandatory Saudi employment quota.
The poor wage structure and the socially unacceptable nature of the job do not attract Saudis whereas cleaning companies are also not keen to hire them for financial reasons.
In the last two years, Jeddah and Makkah experienced repeated garbage pileups as workers stayed off work.
Makkah and its subsidiary municipal areas are divided into five zones under the new cleaning contract where each cleaning tender is different from the other. The contract covers not only Makkah city but also the pilgrimage sites of Mina, Muzdalifah and Arafat, and Joomum and Bahra near Jeddah.
The cleaning contract worth over SR205 billion was signed last week with several companies where a total of 11,825 workers will be charged with the responsibility of cleaning the city, according to the Makkah Municipality.
Sources told Arab News that the new cleaning companies will start work later but have begun to procure the cleaning equipment to commence the job.
“We have taken the necessary steps to secure the cleaning of the holy city distributed in well defined geographical zones,” said Mayor of Makkah Osama Al-Bar. It would lead to a healthier environment and facilitate field follow-ups by branch directorates and municipalities, he added.
The mayor said that the same cleaning work force will continue to work during the Haj and Ramadan seasons. Earlier, the municipality used to hire seasonal workers but the results were unsatisfactory.
Jeddah had also followed a similar pattern earlier where the city and adjoining municipalities were divided into nine zones and the cleaning contract was awarded to five companies at a cost of SR1.8 billion.