2023-12-23 02:12:33
+++By Bakary Badji (intern)+++
Dakar, Dec 22 (APS) – Women are increasingly making a place for themselves in the public cleaning sector under the leadership of the National Integrated Waste Management Company (SONAGED) of which they represent 46% of the overall workforce. employees.
”Out of a workforce of 16,000 workers, 46% are women,” Ousmane Ndiaye, director of human resources at SONAGED, told APS.
”They are increasingly well represented at all levels of the public cleaning company,” added Mr. Ndiaye recently on the sidelines of the internal launching ceremony of the plan called Eksina, the main objective of which is to improve the waste collection capacity of this company.
46% of cleaning staff are women
A tour of the streets of the city of Dakar allows you to see to what extent women are deployed on the ground to provide the public waste collection service. They play their part to the fullest.
Dressed in work outfits in the colors and effigies of SONAGED, they are hard at work on a daily basis to clean the arteries of the neighborhoods of the municipalities of Dakar and surrounding areas.
Near the Alioune Sow emergence bridge, towards Patte-d’oie, one of the districts of Dakar, Faty Bâ, in her late forties, and her comrades, have already finished cleaning the place on this December morning.
Proudly dressed in her green work outfit, with a black scarf tied tightly around her head, she is getting ready, she says, “to go have breakfast”.
Having been in this profession for 9 years, she maintains that the time when women in the cleaning sector razed the walls is over.
“At the time,” she says, “we razed the walls to avoid the disdainful looks of passers-by. Which is no longer the case today because we earn a good living.
“Today, many of the women I meet want to work as cleaners by asking where the management of our company is located,” she confides, praising the work of modernizing and promoting the cleaning work undertaken by the new general management of SONAGED.
Women no longer shave walls
For her, this rush of women towards this profession is also linked to the current situation.
“By doing this job, we (women) just want to provide for ourselves and our respective families,” said Faty Bâ, also a mother of several children. She believes that “reaching out on a daily basis is contemptuous”.
Adja Ndoumbé Mbengue, a SONAGED employee, found working on cleaning the public road near the Patte-d’Oie town hall, confides that she decided to take up this profession since 2000, at the time of the Municipal Sanitation Agency (AMA) Senegal. “At that time there were not many women in this profession,” she says.
”Many of them thought that cleaning public roads and collecting waste was a demeaning job for a woman,” added Ms. Mbengue, who said she was delighted
to note that today “many women are knocking on the door of this company, to practice our profession”.
”It’s really a rush!” she exclaims, pointing out that sometimes a woman comes to ask her how she could get this job.
Today, after more than 20 years of activity in the cleaning sector, Adja Ndoumbé Mbengue, in her late fifties, declares that she exercises her profession with pride.
“I no longer want to do another job other than cleaning public spaces,” she admits.
Rush of women in the cleaning sector
Alongside veterans of the sector like Adja Ndoumbé Mbengue and Faty Ba, there are novices like Aminata Lo, a woman of frail stature, found not far from the health center, Nabil Choucair.
“I have just embraced this profession through SONAGED for only two years,” she says. ”Previously, I sold breakfast in front of our family home. But because of the economic situation, I decided to stop this activity to knock on the door of this company,” explains the young lady.
Not far from the Nabil Choucair health center, the footbridge which spans the Seydina Limamoulaye highway is not teeming with people on this day compared to other working days.
The sellers of accessories who transformed this footbridge, this pedestrian crossing, were chased away by the municipal authorities, we noted on site.
On the other side of the highway, on the side of the Grand-Yoff HLM, there is a Standardized Regroupment Point (PRN), one of the many sites supporting the pre-collection of waste from the districts of Dakar.
These PRNs are intended to collect waste from pre-collection and prevent its dispersion while respecting environmental standards.
The cleanliness of the country, a source of pride
At this PRN, Awa Diop, in work clothes, is busy making the final adjustments while waiting for the garbage collection trucks to pass.
Aged around twenty, she says she has been working in this cleaning profession with pride for a little over a year. “I am proud to work for the cleanliness of my country,” she declared, believing that the cleanliness of our living environment is important.
“When a foreigner arrives in a locality, one of the first things that attracts his attention is the state of health of the surroundings,” she says, hence the importance of this profession in her eyes.
Awa Diop called for the inclusion of women in all sectors of work. ”It’s our times that demand it,” she added.
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