I travelled to Liverpool Street today and spoke to Andrew and Samuel, and was given permission to talk to their female cleaners. They were three lovely ladies - Gifti, Mavis and Shanpong. They told me about what it was like being a cleaner at the station. I think they were pleased someone was interested in the job they did and recognised it is not an easy job.
What was interesting was the background around why they do this job. Gifti, Mavis and Shanpong are all Ghanaian cleaners, working in the UK and supporting their extended family back in Ghana. In Ghana, there is no state pension, so old people are wholly dependent on younger family members to support them. They were all supporting their mothers, and some children back in their home country. Gifti and Mavis were both hairdressers back home, but this does not pay much money. Also unless you work in a Government job (hard to get), you were quite likely to be working in a casual job, hourly paid - and, appallingly to me, very often they did not get paid for work once they had done it! So working in the UK, for Interserve, they were guaranteed to be paid for the work they have done, and in comparison to Ghanaian rates of pay, it was good money.
One of these ladies was quite upset about how customers treated them. She preferred to be working in public areas with lots of people around. She was very unhappy about working alone in the downstairs toilets, as last week when she was cleaning the men's toilets, a man exposed himself to her. Also people leave blood and faeces in toilets without flushing them, and sometimes vomit without informing the staff a special clean is required.
When I asked how customers valued their work, none of them said any customers said thank you! I think the recognition of this project is important to them.
Their values centred around being hard workers, financially supporting their families, caring for them and being humble before God. They usually went home once a year, and were very much looking forward to seeing their Mum and children again.
They are good women.
Their own language is Twi, and when I spoke to Samuel (their Ghanaian supervisor), he said he could translate the 4 values I will put on the bottom of the sampler, into Twi.
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