{"id":240518,"date":"2022-10-19T13:38:21","date_gmt":"2022-10-19T11:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/car-washers-at-some-shopping-malls-pay-a-fee-to-work\/"},"modified":"2022-10-19T13:38:21","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T11:38:21","slug":"car-washers-at-some-shopping-malls-pay-a-fee-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/car-washers-at-some-shopping-malls-pay-a-fee-to-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Car washers at some shopping malls pay a fee to work"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Tariro%20Washinyira\/carwashlist-tarirowashinyira-20221019.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/car-washers-at-some-shopping-malls-pay-a-fee-to-work.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Car washers pay for a spot in some shopping malls. Photo: Tariro Washinyira<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Immigrants working for three car wash companies at the V&amp;A Waterfront and Sea Point say they are battling to make ends meet as many of them are required to pay a fee to work.<\/li>\n<li>Some washers say they pay between R120 and R200 to rent a spot to work for the day, and the companies deduct a fee of up to R25 from each car wash payment.<\/li>\n<li>However, the company we spoke to said the charges are reasonable, and cover washers\u2019 uniforms, cleaning products and equipment as well as hefty rent to the malls.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Immigrants working for car wash companies in the parking areas at the V&amp;A Waterfront and Sea Point in Cape Town say they are battling to make ends meet as many of them are required to pay a fee to work. Many of the workers we spoke to are Zimbabwean and Malawian.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/car-washers-at-some-shopping-malls-pay-a-fee-to-work.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>However, the company we spoke to says that the fee is reasonable, as it covers rent to the shopping malls, cleaning products and laundry.<\/p>\n<p>GroundUp visited sites of three companies and spoke to workers. We sent questions to all three companies but only one, StopWash, responded.<\/p>\n<p>At StopWash, which has sites at the Waterfront and Sea Point, car washers pay for their spots. Mondays to Wednesdays they pay R120 for a spot to work, and R140 on Thursdays. The charge increases over weekends and they pay R160 on Fridays, R200 on Saturdays, and R160 on Sundays. The company provides the cleaning products.<\/p>\n<p>The car washers charge R90 for cars and R95 for larger vehicles. But the company deducts R25 from each car wash.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are about 50 car washers. When we wash we ensure the car is spotless so that there are no complaints and we get tips. Some clients tip between R10 and R50. When it\u2019s busy, we clean about ten cars a day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>CEO and founder of StopWash, Mark Kruger, told GroundUp he ran over 20 sites, four in Cape Town, and StopWash was \u201cSouth Africa\u2019s largest car wash\u201d. Kruger said the company had created 4,000 jobs. \u201cI have a backlog of 70 women looking for work after losing work during Covid.\u201d StopWash has an office at the Waterfront.<\/p>\n<p>Kruger said the Cape Town manager has been with the company for 18 years, having started as a washer. \u201cWe have proper training for all our washers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said the company paid rent to the shopping centres of between R20,000 and R25,000 a month, and also bought the cleaning products which cost R15 per car. The company also paid managers and a trainer, and cleaned the washers\u2019 uniforms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe money they pay is used to run the company,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>According to Kruger, washers can earn between R4,500 and R11,000 a month in Cape Town.<\/p>\n<p>A worker at the Waterfront branch said that over month-end weekends, they make about R1,000 from washes and tips. But the commute into the city centre every day is costly, he said, and workers can barely afford rent and groceries.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost of the time I work for transport money and the daily fee so that I don\u2019t lose my spot,\u201d he said. I can\u2019t send money to my children back home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPaying these charges is painful because you may leave with nothing.\u201d He said sometimes he can\u2019t afford the fee for his spot even though he wants to work.<\/p>\n<p>A washer who had worked for StopWash for nearly four years said she joined another company earlier this year where she no longer has to pay for a spot to work. This company deducts R25 per car from their payments. Washes cost R90 for small cars and R95 for larger vehicles. The company provides the cleaning products.<\/p>\n<p>At the third company, which has an office in Sea Point, washers pay R180 per day to secure a spot. They say the payment is due whether or not they make money washing a car that day. The company does not make any deductions from what washers earn per car wash. The washers charge R75 to R85 per car depending on the size of the vehicle. They say cleaning products are supplied.<\/p>\n<p>A former supervisor told GroundUp that washers at this company make up to R1,440 on a busy day. \u201cWe make money on Thursdays and Fridays at the end of a month.\u201d But the worker said that working weekends \u201cis a waste of time\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe keep coming back here because there\u2019s nothing else. It is a very difficult job. We run up and down this big car park following motorists and most of the time they say no,\u201d the worker said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/car-washers-at-some-shopping-malls-pay-a-fee-to-work.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Car washers pay for a spot in some shopping malls. Photo: Tariro Washinyira Immigrants working for three car wash companies at the V&amp;A Waterfront and Sea Point say they are battling to make ends meet as many of them are required to pay a fee to work. Some washers say they pay between R120 and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":240519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-240518","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/car-washers-at-some-shopping-malls-pay-a-fee-to-work.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}