‘Guest labourers a minority among Amman sanitation workers’

AMMAN – The number of guest labourers employed as sanitation workers in the capital has significantly decreased as many Jordanians are applying for this job, a Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) official said on Thursday. 

GAM Executive Director for Human Resources Hatem Hunaiti said only 14 per cent of sanitation workers are migrants. 

“This year, a total of 1,200 Jordanians were hired. The guest labourers working in Amman are the ones who first applied for this job a long time ago. We replaced the guest workers who retired with Jordanians,” he told The Jordan Times over the phone. 

Hunaiti said more than 8,000 Jordanians applied for the job during the past three years. 

He added that sanitation workers constitute a majority of the municipality’s staff. 

“GAM generally has around 8,600 employees. Of this number, 6,177 are sanitation workers.” 

Hunaiti noted that Jordanians have “gotten over” the culture of shame and they now see no problem in doing this kind of work. 

“We provide a number of incentives which I prefer to call their rights. We provide them with a special fund that includes end-of-service compensation and 20 university scholarships annually. They are also paid a minimum of JD340 a month.”

The municipality official said GAM also provides workers with a percentage of their salary if they are injured, adding that between 80 and 100 injuries are recorded a year.