Elections: A Street Sweeper’s Nightmare

Although Tehran city officials ban election campaigns from hanging posters around the capital, the rule is widely ignored: Whenever there’s an election, posters are slapped on just about every surface around the city, telling the public why they should vote for one candidate over another.

Mashhadi Barat is a neighborhood street sweeper. His monthly salary is a little over $360. For Mashhadi Barat, the word “election” is synonymous with “nightmare.” Because once people have gone to the polls and the election is over — after the excitement and enthusiasm for change have died down, and anger or jubilation has subsided and everyone goes home to sleep — Barat has a big problem. The city no longer looks the way it once did, and it’s his job to fix it.

The streets are unrecognizable, covered with layers of paper and tape and glue. Armed with a bucket and a sharp spade, Barat attacks walls, electrical boxes, mailboxes and phone booths, and begins the long process of making them clean and clear again.

It’s a strange scene. The election is over, but the candidates are still there, smiling down from the walls of buildings, from across shutters protecting stores, looking up from sidewalks and street surfaces, and even from traffic signs and high-voltage electricity poles.

Mashhadi Barat came to the city from his village when he was 11. He started with a monthly salary of $11 — at today’s exchange rate, it actually had more buying power then — and has been at his job for 21 years. His base monthly salary is $255, going up to $360 with overtime and bonuses. He works the graveyard shift, from midnight to 8am.

Barat is responsible for six streets. He goes up and down them, from one end to the other, each night. He collects the garbage strewn across the streets, taking it to the location where a municipality truck collects it in the morning. “On elections nights, we start right away, even before the results are in,” he says. “Sometimes it’s impossible to unstick a poster from the wall, no matter what we do. It remains there, until the sun and other weather make it rot and fall away. Carrying water in a bucket all night is a backbreaking task and, in addition, working at nights has its own dangers.” He knows someone who died on the job, and no one was held responsible for the accident. “You can be killed without warning. A few years back a car ran over a colleague of mine. It is not easy working at night.”

Barat is a religious man: “Mashhadi” is actually not his name, it’s the name given to anyone who has gone on pilgrimage to Imam Reza’s shrine in Mashhad. Though he is of modest means, it was important for him to make this journey, and fulfil his duty as a devoted Shia Muslim.

But despite his hard work and his commitment to Islam, life in and out of work is difficult for Barat. He says his job is simply not conducive to a normal life. “You can’t spend time with your wife and kids because you have to sleep all through the day. We do have insurance but it doesn’t do anything,” he says. “The contractor gets out from under its obligations every which way it can. In the beginning, the municipality was our employer. The salaries and bonuses were lower but we received them on time. Now it we work for the contractors — but the contractors are the same government people. I mean, only the names have changed, but it’s government people who set up contracting companies. It’s easy for them to cut our salaries whenever they want. Sometimes we don’t get paid for three months and sometimes they cut off our insurance for months.”

"Where Else Can I Go?"

Barat is only paid for a few hours of overtime during elections. “Some fellows say that the contractor has a very good contract with the municipality to clean up the city on election night,” he says. “The contractor receives the money from the government, so then why they don’t give us our money? Only God knows. They know we need the job and that we’re not going anywhere. I am 48 years old. Where can I go? This is the only job that I know how to do.”

Labor activists have repeatedly accused contractors like the one Barat works for of being “modern slave owners.” They say these companies are usually associated with military or government cartels, which abuse and exploit municipality workers to line their pockets.

In Iran, most campaign material and propaganda is disseminated on paper. While television and online media plays their roles, candidates know that the best way of reaching large numbers of people is through the old fashioned method of posters and leaflets. Mashhadi Barat says that he has cleaned streets after many elections. Every time, he’s shocked by the mess, and how uncaring people can be. They don’t see him, the man who cleans up after their mess.

Barat’s wish is to live long enough to see a totally paperless election campaign. He says that, besides what he and his colleagues have to go through, he feels sorry for all the trees, the trees that have to die just so politicians can fight one another.