The risk: wash and go

It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and the burning sun is high in the sky.

Dressed in dusty blue overalls, four labourers return to their overcrowded residence in Juffair. Joshi, 30, Mohammed Hanif, 33, Baabul, 30, and Muniramir, 37, have been working since 6am on a construction site but their day is only just beginning. They will collect buckets and rags from home and head to Adliya where they will work into the night washing cars. They are not alone. Of Bahrain’s 300,000 migrant workers, hundreds supplement their incomes by cleaning cars.
GulfWeekly reporters -RdS- and Shilpa Chandran investigate

THROUGHOUT Bahrain’s residential, financial and entertainment districts, an army of migrant workers predominantly from the Asian subcontinent scrub and polish until the kingdom’s vehicles are gleaming.
For the migrant workers whose average monthly wage is BD80, washing cars is a lucrative business.
The going rate is BD1 per car for a 20 minute wash although some people pay up to BD5.
People who clean cars full-time can earn as much as BD200 a month, while those who wash cars on top of other employment can take home BD90-100.
But it can be a dangerous sideline.
While there does not appear to be an organised cartel, prices are broadly fixed, and the best pitches are staunchly defended.
“There is a Bahraini guy and two Egyptians who come at night to wash cars in this area,” says Joshi, “one month ago they beat our friend and told him not to work here. Now when we see them we have to leave.”
Soliciting car-washing work is also in most cases illegal.
Shaikh A. Al Khalifa, director of Labour Relations and Inspections said: “It is definitely not legal; unless they have a license or work for a company with a commercial registration it is illegal.
“Immigration mainly deals with these cases. If people are found washing cars illegally there will be a fine or deportation.”
For the hundreds of migrant workers who run away from their sponsors and try to make money independently through washing cars, there is a constant threat of being sent packing from the kingdom.
Similarly, for those without valid Central Population Registration (CPR) cards, the threat of being caught is exacerbated by working in the open.
“If we’re caught we’ll be deported,” says Alum, 35, who washes cars in a private car-park in Manama, “five people, one who is my friend, have been deported in the last year.”
Mohammed Hanif tells of instances when the car-washers have got into trouble for damaging cars – a major problem in Bahrain where some of the most expensive vehicles in the world are driven.
“One Bangladeshi car-washer was sent home because he was accused of scratching the car of a Bahraini,” he explains.
“He had spent three lakh Bangladeshi rupees (BD1,644) and had sold off his house to come here. Now he has nothing. He had to give all the money he had to the court. Now he is living with his wife and three unmarried daughters in a shack.”
He also claims that they have been subjected to racist attacks when washing cars.
“We’ve been beaten up because we’re ‘Hindi’, (a generic term for people from the subcontinent). But we can’t complain because they’ll beat us more,” he says.
However, in some areas car-washers are officially given permission to work, and are most often Bahraini nationals.
In Seef Mall’s car park, there are four Bahraini car-washers.
A security guard at the mall, Mohammed Ashiq said that they supply copies of their CPR cards and mobile numbers, so that any problems can be easily traced back to them.
Elsewhere, migrant workers carry out their routine at sites that are unofficially alloted among themselves. 
In an apartment block car park in Hoora, Sundaram, 40, from South India, washes six cars every day making a total of BD30 a month to supplement the wages he gets from plumbing.
“It’s illegal,” he says, “but I do it to make some extra money, because I have four kids back in India.”
Siddique, 26, a former construction worker from India who now washes cars parked around a coffee shop in Adliya says that he asked permission from the owners of the coffee shop.
They also help him to defend his pitch. “If people try and wash cars in my area the owners will tell them to go,” he said.
Despite washing cars full time, Siddique only earns BD100-110 a month.
The smaller wage reflects the burgeoning number of migrants, eager to enhance their incomes.
In the financial heart of Manama, Alam, 35, has been washing cars for 18 years.
He says: “I clean dustbins at night and in the day I wash the cars of the bank employees. I clean the same car everyday and collect BD10 at the end of the month. Before people used to give more money. Now we get less because there are so many people cleaning cars and there is more competition.” 
It is difficult to estimate how many people wash cars in Bahrain but Alam says it is now in the thousands.
As temperatures soar to almost 50 degrees in the summer, the work also becomes dangerously exhausting.
“It’s very difficult because you have to work under the sun, but I can’t work in the evening because I need to sleep before my other job,” says Alam.
But he says that the hard work and risk of deportation is necessary because he needs the extra money to send home.
The stories of the migrant workers who wash cars bear striking similarity.
Whether they have been here for months, years or decades, car-washing is a necessary way of raising more money to send home to support impoverished families.
The work is hard but it is always done with a smile and the knowledge that each car wash takes them a tiny step closer to home.
“I hope to earn enough to go home for good in two years,” says Balakrishna, a 50-year-old car washer from Kerala, India, “there’s no life here, I miss my family. I hope to go home soon.”