Report on the situation of rural cleaners in extreme weather

Climate change is making extreme weather more frequent, with disproportionate impacts across race, gender and class.

In Hong Kong, the number of extremely hot days in 2021 reached a record high, with 54 days with a maximum temperature of 33.0 degrees Celsius or above, and rainfall and typhoon winds became more severe. This negatively impacts the health and working environment of workers working outdoors. This study reports the impact of extreme weather on rural cleaners in Hong Kong.

We found that over 50% of the rural cleaners employed by the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department and outsourced companies suffered from heat exhaustion and related health problems such as skin diseases and rheumatoid joint pain due to extreme weather. One of the main reasons for heatstroke among rural cleaners is the strong lack of measures and policies for the cleaners to adapt to climate change. According to the 18 recommendations in the Thermal Stress Assessment of Outdoor Cleaning Workplaces published by the Labour Department in 2010, the FEHD has only adopted two.

The report also mentioned that workers agreed that providing rest places with water and electricity near their workplaces is a much-needed measure to help them cope with the impact of climate change on their health and safety. Other suggestions include: FEHD and outsourcing companies should increase the manpower of rural cleaning teams according to the proportion of regional population growth to reduce the burden of cleaning workers; the government should also formulate a "high temperature labor law" to establish objective indicators as the standard for stopping outdoor work .

Read and download the report: https://globalmon.org.hk/en/node/1716

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