Netizens are Outraged at China’s New Way to Measure How Hard Street Cleaners Work

Local authorities of a Chinese city have a new ridiculous way to check how well the street sweepers are doing their jobs.

Since Wednesday, inspectors in Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, have been weighing dirt found on the street to determine if the cleaners meet the capital’s cleanliness standards.

The process involves officers scooping up dirt from within a randomly selected square meter on the ground, and measuring its weight on a scale. A street cleaner whose area exceeds 5 grams of dust per square meter will get a strike on his/her record. Accumulating three strikes will get the cleaner fired. According to People’s Daily (via Mashable), the supervisors will also get penalized for missing their target dirt limit.

Forced to work overtime from 4 a.m. to 6 p.m, 62-year-old cleaner Wang Guanhai has to go over his cleaning spot four to five times per shift just to meet the requirement, reports China News Service.

Eventually, the new system will be rolled out to other large provinces, including Shandong, Hebei, and Zhongwei.

The unusual inspection method has sparked outrage among Chinese netizens when the news broke out. Local social media platforms have been abuzz with discussions on how unfair the new system is for cleaners.

Many have noted that making the streets dust-free is an impossible task considering the amount of pollution in the area.

“Are you trying to kill the sanitation workers? The air is full of dust, so they’ll never be able to keep the roads entirely dust-free,” a netizen pointed out.

“The cleaners are just workers, not slaves. I see them doing a good job every day, even in the deepest time of winter,” added another.

“Don’t you think the dust on the road is because of the dust in the air? You’re throwing the sanitation workers under the bus,” another concerned Weibo user wrote.

Another comment probably summed up exactly what’s up: “The government must have run out of new rules to put in, so it’s just giving people more work to do.”

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