Attached and responsible for the profession of cleaning the streets

(Baonghean) - Every day, when the streets are fast asleep, the sound of brooms from environmental sanitation workers like Ms. Nguyen Thi Hai Yen (Nghe An Urban Environment Company Limited) echoes throughout the streets; so that every morning the city wakes up to welcome a new day in fresh, clean air...

At 40 years old, Ms. Nguyen Thi Hai Yen spends half of her time working at Nghe An Urban Environment Company Limited. A broom in her hand and a garbage truck accompany her as she walks along every nook and cranny of every street and corner.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Hai Yen with her nightly work.

Ms. Yen is in charge of a route of more than 5km in a densely populated area; on average, she has to sweep and fill 7 garbage trucks every day, not to mention the garbage that people collect in alleys and lanes. In total, each shift, her small stature has to push up to 30 garbage trucks to the transfer point to be loaded into the compactor. Now, the compactor has many improvements, sanitation workers like her do not have to laboriously scoop garbage into baskets and then toss it onto the truck like before, labor is somewhat freed up, but the job of going out at night and coming back home late at night, being friends with dust and garbage is no less difficult because of that.

20 years in the profession, her footprints are imprinted on many streets and alleys. On holidays, especially New Year's Eve, when the earth and sky transition from the old year to the new year, immediately after that, environmental sanitation workers like her have to work harder than usual, unable to gather with their families because they have to do the task of making each street and tree row the most beautiful and cleanest in the moment of welcoming the new year... She said that every job has its own joy, the joy of her and her colleagues is waking up every morning to see the streets clean and beautiful, everyone can live in fresh air. Even happier is that people's awareness of environmental protection is increasingly raised, contributing to reducing the burden on the environment, reducing the hardship for sanitation workers like her.

...At home, Ms. Yen is a good wife and mother. Her husband is a construction worker, often away from home. Taking care of two small children alone, with a shift-based urban sanitation job, is not easy. When the children were a little older, her father-in-law had a stroke, and she was the eldest daughter-in-law in the family... With a salary of 4 million VND/month including shift pay and hazardous allowance, along with 3 million VND of her husband's salary, to be able to cover living expenses, in addition to the hours of quietly sweeping the streets, she has to wash dishes for hire, collect scrap to earn extra income. Fortunately, "children from poor families" are often smart early, her two sons, Khanh and Tien, soon learned to replace their mother in doing housework, taking care of each other, and teaching each other to study. Her hardships seemed to disappear when she received certificates of merit from her children. Every year, Khanh and Tien are recognized as excellent students, advanced students. Last year, Nguyen Trung Khanh won the provincial excellent student award in Information Technology.

Despite the hardships, she has no intention of quitting her job. Not only that, she is always enthusiastic, hard-working and highly responsible, whether it is sunny or rainy. As a model worker, she is ready to take on the hardest and most difficult jobs and always completes her assigned tasks excellently. Saving from poverty and hardship, overcoming the hardships of life is also a way for her to overcome herself and learn to share. She said, she lives with her job, earns clean money with her own labor, so why should she be ashamed or feel inferior? The streets are the face of the city, we cannot let garbage be everywhere! Every day, after cleaning a street, she still comes back at the end of the day to see if there is any garbage that people have just thrown out so she can collect it cleanly...

Ms. Le Thi Hong Ky, Chairwoman of the Trade Union of Nghe An Urban Environment Company Limited, said: “Despite her extremely difficult family circumstances, Ms. Nguyen Thi Hai Yen always excellently completes the assigned work, and is loved and trusted by the unit's leaders and colleagues. Every year, she achieves the title of Emulation Fighter at the grassroots level; in 2012 and 2013, she was awarded a Certificate of Merit by the Vinh City Labor Federation; in 2014, she was awarded a Certificate of Merit by the Provincial Labor Federation. She is one of 10 workers honored to attend the Provincial Patriotic Emulation Congress”. That belief and honor are great motivations for her to continue to be committed and responsible to her profession...

Article and photos:Pear