IF these part-time school cleaners can protest and make the news .as reported in Stabroek  News dated November 24-2011,then someone in authority must look into this too for the poor. School cleaners may soon be paid a minimum wage if President Bharrat Jagdeo’s words still have any weight after Monday’s elections.
The Head of State reportedly made the promise at a lunch-time protest by cleaners outside the Office of the President (OP), on Shiv Chanderpaul Drive, to press for higher wages given the steep cost of living.
The schools custodians from various secondary schools in the city receive a salary of $18,000 per month and decided to show that they had had enough.
These people do not clean for eight hours like those young women who work for a garment clothing factory at Coldingen Industrial Estate, E.C.D. Such garment factories are called “sweat shops” in North America.
The young ladies work from eight in the mornings to four thirty in the afternoons, Monday to Saturday, sitting and stitching on heavy- duty machines.
These young ladies work six days a week for five thousand dollars which is back-breaking for most, but never complain because there is nowhere and no one to complain to. They either take it or leave it in order to eke out a living for themselves.
I was told that this employer has many transport buses which picks up employees at certain points and take them to work and back to the point of pick-up free of charge. I don’t think it’s so because I was made to understand that the transportation  cost is taken out of their wages without these young ladies’ knowledge.
If this is not slave labour and a sweat shop then nothing is.
Most of these young ladies who work for this garment factory are not well educated and are being exploited.
I ask anyone how citizens of Guyana make a living working six days a week on five thousand dollars per week, while these part-time school cleaners hollering their guts out for more wages.