CAR WASH: Business on the Streets [Archives:1999/52/Reportage]

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December 28 1999

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Poverty, which plagues many families in this country, is the main reason for the emergence of car cleaners in the streets of our cities. After all, the average daily per capita income in Yemen is less than ONE US DOLLAR. Even that suffers from a skewed distribution. For the 40% most poor of our society, the average daily income is less than FIVE CENTS. 
That leads people to find various odd jobs to make ends meet. It is not only adults, but children and even infants help out meet family needs. 
Thus, it is mostly children who work as car cleaners. Despite differences in their backgrounds, there are many common factors, as we report below. 
First, Family Circumstances: 
Most families, comprising between six to nine members, suffer from poverty. This is in spite of the fact that their fathers or breadwinners are still alive and do the same or different work by with very low income that does not meet the minimum family requirements. Those children also suffer from chiding by other remote family members who do nothing to help them. 
Second, School Conditions: 
Some of car cleaners continue their schooling and are able to cope with both studies and work. They go to school in the morning then spend the rest of the day and evening cleaning cars. However, others left school due to inability to meet more expenses either because their father was dead or invalid. They wish to continue their studies but could not due to worsening economic conditions. 
Third, Providing Income: 
Most of them provide the only source of income for their families. They either spend it on their family or save it until the end of the month then transfer the lot to their family’s place of residence. 
Fourth, Rates: 
They clean between three to five cars daily at prices that differ according to the customer and type of service. For example, wiping windows only would cost 20 rials, while cleaning windows and the car’s body would cost 50 rials. Cleaning the car using soap would cost 100 rials. Their incomes vary from 150 to 500 rials per day. 
Answers by a number of those cleaners revealed that their poor families were behind their invlvement in that type of work. They expressed readiness to do any kind of work just to provide a source of income for their impoverished families. 
When asked about the nature of accidents that may occur to him, one of them Waseem Abdulsalam Al-Humaidy, 11, said that customers’ non-payment, heat of the sun and cold nights were the main difficulties facing him. 
He said that he has been in that profession for two years and before that he used to have a bathroom scale (asking people to weigh themselves in return for five or ten rials), but that did not provide enough money. 
Waseem said that a car once ran over his right foot and another threw him on his back. He works in two shifts: six hours in the morning and five hours in the evening which makes him feel totally exhausted. However, he does not think of quitting the job because he helps his father meet the living expenses and because he did not find any other job. He said that he brings water condensed from steam emited by a nearby laundry or buys some. 
Hiyam Ali Al-Haimi, 14, left school at the preparatory stage and resorted to cleaning cars to cater for her eight-member family. Her father is incapable of working while her elder brother is working in a leather factory with a low salary. 
Hiyam’s younger brother works with her. She started this work only a year ago and before that she begged for money but later she found that cleaning cars was more profitable than begging in the streets. 
Asked about her schooling, Hiyam said that her work is a necessity and she could not cope with both. She elaborated that schooling needs expenses that nobody could provide and that she covers a main portion of her family’s needs. 
The little kid wishes to work as a cleaner in any institution to enable her continue her schooling and at the same time continue to supply her family with necessary funds. 
Hiyam works seven hours a day in front of Ford Showroom, and in Ramadan she works from 4 pm to 4 am and buys her food from a nearby restaurant. On one occasion, she refused a free meal from that restaurant. She enjoys a strong character and has the upper hand over her fellow cleaners. 
Hiyam said that sometimes she feels dizzy and tired from continuous work under the heat of the sun and complains that a number of drivers tease her. She refuses the idea of marriage charging that men are not faithful. 
Another kid, Salman Ahmad Qayed has been working in that profession for only two months. His father is dead and he is the breadwinner of a seven-member family. The 15-year-old boy studies in the sixth grade in the morning and cleans cars in the afternoons. 
His family lives in Makbana, a village in Taiz province, with one of his brothers while the other is a student in Taiz and the rest are females. 
He worked for one week in a restaurant in Taiz before he was sacked at the pretext of incompetency. His mother advised him to work in cleaning cars to cover up their needs after his uncle seized his father’s money. 
Salman saves what he earns and sends it to his mother every month. He secures water from a nearby pump and works for seven hours under the sun heat which left him with severe headache. 
Salman, who sleeps in a shop along with comrades of the same profession, had been victim of a number of accidents as a result of his work in the streets. 
Another lad, Faisal Mohammed Nasser Al-Shameery, 16, studies at the elementary stage and works with his father in the same profession. The rest of the family live in Shameer with the exception of his elder brother, who is an employee with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and another one who works as a caretaker in a Sanaa building. 
Faisal started that line of work four years ago, at his father’s advice, when he was only 12 years old and had no work. He gives his father all what he earns and he secures water from a nearby pump. 
He is always liable to sun strokes and needs a lot of water to drink but he scarcely gets hit by cars. 
Finally, those poor fellows are forced to pursue that line of work, in spite of its difficulty, due to their enormous hardships that came about as a result of the country’s dwindling economic situation and the escalating wave of soaring prices. 
By Habib Al Noman
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