HAIL — The police here have arrested two supervisors of a cleaning company on charges of exploiting street cleaners during the holy month of Ramadan. They are accused of driving the street cleaners to beg by asking each one of them to pay SR2,000 before the end of the fasting month. Reporting the story on Sunday, Al-Hayat did not reveal the names of the supervisors but said they were Asian expatriates. It said the case came to light less than a week after an Asian supervisor at a cleaning company was arrested for forcing the street cleaners to beg. The police said the two supervisors were charged with paving the road for the cleansers to beg by asking them to work at night at the Barazan women market. According to sources close to the cleaners, the two supervisors upped their monthly taxes to SR2,000 per individual during Ramadan from SR500 during the other months of the year. There are about 170 street cleaners in downtown Hail who are assigned the work of cleaning all neighborhoods including the Barazan women market. A cleaner, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a former supervisor was asking them to pay SR300 a month but the new supervisors raised up his stakes from SR500 to SR2,000. According to the police, a sum of SR3,176 was found with one of the cleaners who said he had collected it from a day's begging in the women market. A supervisor who was apprehended last month in Hail was asking every street cleaner to pay him SR1,000 every month to permit him to work in the evening shifts near traffic signals on busy thoroughfares.
