Silent heroes on the front lines

Since taking on disinfection assignments during the circuit breaker period in April last year, Mr Mohamad Yazid Jasnay, 43, makes sure he sanitises his hands thoroughly using the new sanitiser dispenser he installed outside his five-room HDB flat before entering his home.

He heads straight for the shower, and his clothes go into the washing machine with detergent and disinfectant solution for good measure.

Mr Yazid has been working with facility management company CBM for 23 years.

He is the operations manager of CBM's environmental division, having worked his way up from a cleaning floater where he did all sorts of cleaning jobs from cleaning toilets to vacuuming carpets in buildings, offices and companies he was assigned to.

Since the start of the pandemic, he and his cleaning teams have also had to disinfect areas visited by Covid-19 cases. On top of disinfectant cleaning jobs, he has 30 other cleaning sites to handle.

Some 100 people are under his supervision, including the disinfectant cleaners. Besides disinfectant jobs, they also provide normal cleaning services.

There are six disinfectant teams in CBM. He is in charge of two teams, each with four disinfectant cleaners.

His company is one of the many listed by the Ministry of Health and the National Environment Agency that operators of premises exposed to confirmed Covid-19 cases can contact to carry out disinfection and cleaning.

Within about two hours of being called by a client, Mr Yazid's team would be on-site.

"As the team lead, I liaise with the client to get more information such as where the Covid-19 case had sat. From there, we cordon off the area before we do anything. I must be sure that the place is safe and nobody is around," said Mr Yazid.

Cleaning equipment including an electrostatic sprayer, biohazard bin, mop, cloth and pails are unloaded from the company van that he drives.

The van is kept stocked and ready so that the disinfection crew can be activated any time through the team's group chat.

The team members then sanitise their hands and don their personal protective equipment (PPE), pulling on yellow rubber gloves over their surgical gloves.

High-touch points are wiped down with disinfectant solution, while other areas are sprayed with disinfectant solution.

The electrostatic sprayer, which weighs 4.5kg, holds up to 8.5 litres of disinfectant solution.

Depending on the size of the area, the process can take an hour or more. Other teams are activated for larger sites, and Mr Yazid said his longest assignment took about eight hours.

After each disinfection, the electrostatic sprayer, mop stick and pails are cleaned with disinfectant solution, and everything else, such as the PPE and mop head, is thrown away as biohazard waste.

At the end of every disinfection assignment, every cleaner is usually drenched in perspiration as the non-porous PPE traps heat and moisture, Mr Yazid said.

The father of four daughters, aged seven to 19, said that his children would ask him, "Is this the way you do the disinfection", whenever they see something similar or pandemic-related on TV.

They also tease him, saying that he looks like a character from the Ghostbusters movie and ask if he shoots aliens in his safety suit.

While Singaporeans in the company are able to go home to their families at the end of the day, foreigners are housed in rented residential units instead of dormitories so they do not intermingle with staff from other companies.

Malaysian Nithya Balan, 29, a team leader in Mr Yazid's team, has been working in Singapore for seven years.

Her parents and two of her brothers live in Johor, and the last time she saw them was April 3 last year.

Another younger brother works in Singapore as a delivery assistant.

As much as she misses her family, she is soldiering on here, as she hopes to earn enough to buy them a new house.

She video calls her family after work and during mealtime breaks. "One hour is not enough," she exclaimed.

She chats most with her mother, as the two are very close, talking about health, finance and daily life.

In line with government regulations, disinfection workers have to take weekly Covid-19 tests, and attend a disinfection services course.

The Environmental Infection Control and Management course was useful, said Mr Yazid.

"I was initially worried, as I was not sure if I was carrying out disinfection works in a safe manner - especially as my guys are following my lead. I am also the first to face the virus in the course of work.

"I feel confident after we went for the course."

He added: "We usually do normal cleaning, but this is a new challenge for us. Sometimes, my clients are around to thank us and give us support. They appreciate our work.

"It makes me feel a bit proud to be a front-liner."