SPEAKING FOR THE CLEANERS

image

When the idea of hiring cleaners in this great university came into being cannot be determined, but it is an undisputed fact that its usefulness of this idea cannot and can never be overemphasised. Through the work of the cleaners attached to various halls of residence, faculties and even roads that dot our campus, we have a university for people and people for a university.

However, one obvious thing about our dispositions towards our beautiful and clean scenery is that we rarely think of how it comes to be. We seldom avert our minds, every morning when we see spick-and-span bathrooms, toilets, roads, and classrooms, to the fact that it wasn’t a fairy godmother that turned them out beautifully during the night, that it wasn’t that an angel benevolent came all the way from heaven to clean our surroundings for us.

We forget that it is human beings like us who toil daily to do the dirty work. We forget that these human beings are not those who God overlooked in opportunities allocation, but they are aunties and mothers that nature and fortune has placed to do the thankless task.

In our desired amnesia, we treat our environment like it is scornful that we have been endowed with it. In our selective memory loss, we treat our toilets like they are inessential. Some do not even poo in the toilets again, they find comfort in the bathrooms of their hall and you wonder whether the culprits are human beings or abnormal beings. We litter the bins like disposing waste properly will cause the bins to bite us. Quite ironical is that the miscreants are those who appear well packaged and celestial in the open but are bestial when it comes to real cleanliness.

Of course, the nicest of the cleaners do the grunt work without grunting, doing over and over again what we have done while the frustrated amongst them transmute into enflamed beings, shooting embers of curses at the anonymous culprits. Well justified, if we may add, for no one desires to see his laboured work destroyed.

Further infuriating, many of these cleaners work under the most unclean state. They wash soiled toilets with bare hands, dispose of wastes without mouth masks and eat just the same with their bare palms. While they cleanse our dirts to make us dignified, they distain their own dignity.

Going by the inherent indifference of employers towards their employees in Nigeria and prevalent job insecurity, an employee always finds it difficult to ask for welfare packages and endures working under the most inhumane conditions. But as students, it is believed that we can make a case for these women in our halls or faculties. But how can we when we are part of their plight due to our messy disposition towards the facilities cleaned by these women?

Like the proverbial clarion call, Awo Press hopes this editorial rings clear that a person might be an expert in any field of knowledge or a master of many sills and accomplishments, but without cleanliness, that person’s brain is a desert waste.

Dispose your waste properly and dutifully in the waste bins, they won’t bite! Use the toilets like you are coming back to eat there. Respect the cleaners and be part of their cause.

Remember that their cleaning makes you clean and your cleanliness is their own cleanliness.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *