Making poverty ...... history?

Photo by Flickr user didbygraham. Creative Commons Licence.

The company G4S, or Group 4 Securicor, employs roughly half a million people worldwide and of these over 13,000 are in Malawi, making them the largest private sector employer in the country. On their website they have a Social Responsibility section - "our culture of giving back to the communities in which we operate". Really?

Background

Malawi is one of the 10 poorest nations in the world and more than half the population live below the poverty line of $0.44 or roughly 25p a day. The cost of living as measured by a "Basic Needs Basket" has risen by 23% over the last year.

Pay rise = pay cut

The security guards employed by G4S work 60 hours per week and earn on average $26 or £13, a quarter of what is considered a living wage. In order to work 60 hours a week they work 12 hour days - but are paid for 10 hours under the G4S policy to reduce pay by half for overtime hours. [Source]. G4S are offering a 12% pay rise which would effectively reduce their spending power.

Living conditions

Many of the security guards live in houses without electricity or running water. They walk to work because they can't afford fares, and it could take 90 minutes each way. Their families can't afford school or medical fees for their children.

Strike

Workers planned a strike for 30 January but the company won a court injunction against it. The union hopes to overturn the ban and call a strike for 4 February if the company continues to reject their claims.

So what is it that G4S plans to give back into this particular commmunity? Deepening poverty? Exploitation is a word that comes to mind.

I am ashamed to say that the company is based in England, where the Chief Executive enjoys a comfortable salary of £1.1 million.

From NewConsumer

IT support

When you work in IT it is expected:

• that you are the first person to ask if your friend/neighbour/spouse wants to buy a computer or software.

• that you will know how to fix or advise about anything from a printer, to the fax, to the heater in the corridor, to the toaster, to a mobile phone. Anything in fact that plugs into a wall, has little lights or makes whirring noises.

• that, even if the email system is down, you will nevertheless be able to receive and reply to emails saying "the emails don't seem to be working".

• that you'll know how to use every conceivable software package without any training, even ones you've never seen or heard of.

• that you don't expect everyone to follow the (important) instructions you send out because they don't really apply to them and anyway can be interpreted haphazardly with random variations as desired.

• that you are always there, late in the evening, early in the morning, even on days off.

• that you can see over a telephone line or know instinctively what the error message says without being told.

I'm feeling a little jaded - bad day today!

Naughty words

I've been setting up our new email server at work, transferring all the accounts over and ensuring that the virus checking and spam filters are functioning. Because it's a totally new system to me, I've been talked through the set up by the delightful young man who provides us with expertise when necessary.

We've had a certain amount of trouble with the spam filter which we had set up to check rather too ferociously. People were starting to complain about messages being lost and I was fed up with ploughing through the junk folder to extract the legitimate mail.

So we came to the bit where you enter certain words which should cause automatic rejection. After many years of this spam and even longer of life, I have a pretty fair idea of what they should be but my young friend clearly thought I was too innocent to know. But he couldn't bring himself to say any of them out loud.

I'm afraid I found his attempts to explain so amusing that I didn't help at all. By the sound of the guffaws in the background, his colleagues were enjoying it as well.

Of course, I'll have my come-uppance any time soon, when he goes back to see what I've entered. He won't say anything directly of course ....

Freudian slip

I've worked with the same small business which looks after our networks for the last six years. The owner and I do know each other very well now and have a very easy and friendly relationship.

Today I had to confirm with him an order for MS Forefront Security. I couldn't remember the name and I heard myself saying "What's it called? Full Frontal Security?".

I could hear him choking. He is a very, very, umm, pleasant young man. Fortunately living hundreds of miles away.

Appraisal

My boss, who has all but ignored me for two years, sent me an email on Monday to say he would be coming down in our direction today, Wednesday, and he would do my appraisal while he was in the area.

How this is going to be achieved when I have never been given any objectives I don't know, but I feel I have to prepare in some way. I have at least given priority to his pet schemes and never (yet) complained that he has let them drop.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time setting up our new intranet, another of his pet schemes, as well as setting up spam filters on the the new email server, plus the usual IT firefighting that goes on. I started the day at 8:00 am and left at just after 6:00 pm. During the evening I was sent a message to say that our web developers, who were in the midst of a revamp of three websites and a complete rewrite of a fourth, had closed the business and ceased trading yesterday.

So here I am at 5:00 in the morning trying to put some thoughts together. If the truth be known, I have been putting thoughts together all night long, most of them unrepeatable.