China has rules for everything. At times, that’s frustrating. But they can be a very good thing, a point illustrated well these hot days by regulations helping to protect our City’s sanitation workers, and against the odds, somehow get the job done.
Respite has come in the form of rain the past 24 hours, if that, in Nanjing, bringing a form of wet relief to the summer sweltering. Nevertheless, work must go on. Thus, Nanjing has created 640 “love stations” in the streets and alleys of our City to serve front-line sanitation workers.
According to Nanjing’s rules of “high-temperature-mode operations”, when the maximum temperature any day exceeds 40 degrees Celsius, outdoor manual work shall cease.
When temperatures reach 37 to 40 degrees, work may proceed but only according to national regulations; no more than 6 hours, with outdoor open-air operations not arranged to take place within 3 hours of the peak temperature. All open-air manual work should be suspended between 12:00 and 15:00.
Bringing us to the Nanjing “love stations”.
The Yangtze Evening News reports that Nanjing has now set up a total of 147 sanitation-healthcare stations and 494 public-welfare stations. The effort has enabled a high-temperature cooling service network that embraces more than 15,000 sanitation workers in the City.
By establishing and improving emergency-contingency plans for conditions such as heat stroke, shortening outdoor working hours and conducting health checks, together with other measures, the love stations seek to guarantee sanitation operations even in this weather.
In addition, each worker is paid ¥300 per person per month as a “high-temperature bonus”, while the love station also brings workers cool drinks, mung bean soup, watermelon and other items to help relieve their daily heat.
Incidentally, away from the love stations but still with the summer heat and its side effects, those road-cleaning vehicles which prowl our City’s street in pairs are also actually known as “dust-suppression vehicles”.
You’ll find them cleaning our City’s main thoroughfares from 23:00 to 06:30, 12:00 to 15:00 and 19:00-21:00. More call for the vehicles to lay down their cooling layer of water on secondary roads only between 09:00 and 11:30.
