Mark started his career with the City of Greater Dandenong in 2019 as a driver operator working with the Roads and Drains team. He’s now the Cleansing Foreperson, managing a hardworking team of 30 that keeps our city tidy.
Your role as Cleansing Foreperson keeps you on your toes at all hours, it seems. Give us an idea of what your work for Council includes. I’m not sure where to start because it includes so much—everything you can see, smell, touch, walk past, walk on in our public areas has to stay clean and safe. That’s footpath, kerb and channel sweeping, residential and industrial sweeping, carpark attending and street litter, dumped-rubbish collection and more. That’s where my crew and I do our work. We do it every day and at all hours. My day starts at 6am, but our crews’ shifts are staggered throughout the day and night. We have a daily meeting to discuss what needs to be done, and cleaning crews, who focus on different parts of cleaning and maintenance make sure all of that work gets done. That includes almost everything you can think of—toilets, barbecues, parks and reserves, benches, streets, footpaths, waste bins, nature strips. Whatever you can name needs someone to keep it clean and working as it should. The community counts on it.
How does your workday end? I make a broad circuit of the municipality to make certain that the job has been completed, and I also keep an eye out for anything that may not be reported, like graffiti or dumped rubbish. Those are always things that take extra effort, but they need to be addressed. People may not think about how they get done, but they certainly notice if they are neglected. People count on us.
Have any days remained in your memory as unusual? An older resident had kept some valuables in his freezer, unbeknownst to his wife, apparently. One day, his wife went on a cleaning spree and tossed out everything, treasure and all. We had to find it for him, and we did. Our contractor’s pick-ups are wellenough organised that we were able to limit the search to just one small part of the truck and we found it within half an hour. I was happy we could help him with that. Like I said, people count on us.