A quiet but precious profession

People often compare environmental sanitation workers to hard-working, diligent and responsible bees cleaning the streets, so that every morning when we wake up, we see cleaner and more beautiful streets. The sanitation work seems simple but it contains many hardships, difficulties and dangers that are always close by. They come to the job because of fate and attachment to the job.

Every evening, when the street lights are on, or early morning, when the street lights have not yet turned off, on the streets and alleys, environmental sanitation workers diligently collect, classify waste, sweep and transport carts full of garbage to the collection point for processing.

Every day, at 5 p.m., Ms. Bui Thi Van - a worker of Nam Thanh Environment and Energy Joint Stock Company, starts sweeping and collecting garbage on Hoang Van Thu and Quang Trung streets in Yen Bai ward. From the beginning to the end of her shift, she is diligently cleaning the streets. When the streets are asleep, her reflective green shirt still creeps in and the sound of the broom still echoes in the quiet night.

Ms. Van confided: I have been in this profession for 5 years. The job of a street cleaner is to clean the streets. With the amount of waste from households, leaves... every night, I have to push about 4 garbage carts to the collection point and work until 9 pm, when the garbage is cleaned up, I can return home.

But she doesn't always have a 9pm break, sometimes she doesn't get home until the next morning because there's too much trash to clean up, and she has to work overtime to help clean up the streets after floods. The nature of the job has its own hardships. In the summer, it's hot and sweaty, and in the winter, the nights are cold and drizzly, so it's easier to get sick, but she still pushes the cart in the deserted, scared place... She can take time off for other jobs, but being a cleaner is very difficult, because if she doesn't clean up for just one day, the streets will be full of trash, and it's not easy to find someone to replace her because everyone has their own part of the job. When working, she has to keep track of the time to sweep in time for the garbage truck to arrive, and the amount of trash can be too much or too little, making it impossible to control.

With her thick, calloused hands, Van quickly pushes the cart and collects trash. Many people still think that being a janitor is just a simple job of sweeping the streets, but holding a long, heavy bamboo broom to sweep kilometers on the streets, while sweeping and pushing a cart full of trash is not easy. Not only that, doing this job means accepting the stench and toxicity that affect your health.

As a special job, they are often exposed to garbage and dust, which can easily affect their health, especially respiratory and joint problems. In addition, cleaners have very little time for their families. Besides, on holidays and Tet, when everyone is busy preparing to shop and planning trips with their families, these sanitation workers are still diligently sweeping and cleaning the streets and alleys.

Also a worker at Nam Thanh Environment and Energy Joint Stock Company, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu Huyen confided: There are many days when I work all day and I can't talk or play with my children. Because when I start work, my children haven't come home from school yet, and when I get home, it's late and they've already gone to bed.

But not everyone sympathizes with the work of the cleaners, and there are still some people who are not very aware, and they casually throw garbage on the street, not in the right place. Ms. Huyen shared: Sometimes I feel sorry for myself. While many people understand and share my work, there are still people who show contempt for environmental sanitation workers. People are aware that they will help sort waste or dump waste in the right place, but there are people who litter, making it very difficult to collect; some people even saw us passing by and stood far away, throwing garbage, hitting people. Sometimes when I reminded them, I only received rude words in return. I hope that everyone will understand and sympathize more with our job and raise awareness and responsibility in joining hands to protect the environment.

Not only Ms. Huyen, all the street sweepers hope that people will raise their awareness of preserving and protecting the environment; hope to receive understanding, because every job is valuable, especially the street sweeping job, which brings a clean and beautiful environment, is even more worth sharing.

Amidst the hustle and bustle of life, regardless of day or night, rain or shine, amidst the hustle and bustle, dust of the streets or the silence of the night, when everyone is deep in sleep, on the streets, environmental sanitation workers still quietly and silently clean the streets so that when dawn comes, the street corners are clean and airy.

Source: https://baolaocai.vn/nghe-tham-lang-ma-tran-quy-post884954.html