By Sanaullah Ataullah
DOHA: With the summer vacation coming to an end and businesses back to normal, cleaning services companies are seeing a steep rise in business. Witnessing a surge in demand, some companies have stopped working on hourly basis.
“We offered our services on hourly basis, especially during the past three months, and even then about two-third of our workers were sitting at home without work”, the manager at a local cleaning company told The Peninsula yesterday.
“By the beginning of this month, the demand for cleaning services increased significantly. We got contracts with a shopping mall and a hypermarket. All our 33 workers are on duty now,» said the manager.
“We provided cleaners to homes, shopping centres and other premises at QR20 per hour per head when we were almost jobless. But now we have enough work so we changed our working style and are making a contract for cleaning a premise based on its size and nature of the work rather than providing workers on hourly basis”.
“Usually we quote the prices only after checking the facility to avoid conflict with the customer,» said the manager of another cleaning company. Some landlords, when they see a worker taking rest, think that cleaners deliberately delay work to stretch the working time for making more money.
To avoid such complaints, we quote the price for our services in advance and make a contract before starting the work, said the manager.
«We make long-term contracts, not less than six months. We quote QR2,600 for a cleaner per month for eight hours. The company provides accommodation and transportation to the workers. The operational cost is about QR1,600 per labourer (QR1,000 salary + QR300 each for transportation and accommodation), but you have to remember that there are days when we don›t get any work,» he said.
Workers also get two to three hours overtime and more money for working during official holidays as per the labour law. The normal working hours are 6am to 2pm and with overtime, work ends at 5pm.
The authorities have tightened the rules on cleaning companies and blacklisted many of them for flouting the labour law.
“Some cleaning services companies failed to meet the requirements of Wage Protection System (WPS) and were blacklisted. My company is one of them. We could not transfer salaries to the account of workers so the services from the authorities to my company are still suspended,» said a manager. The blacklisted companies cannot apply for visas to hire fresh workers from oversees until they rectify the error, explained the manager.
“We opened accounts with the banks for our workers and started transferring salaries to their accounts, thanks to growing business,” he said.The Peninsula
