For techies like Beena George, a project manager with a multinational company at Technopark, who “simply don’t have the time” to wash cars, a group of women – Technopark’s ‘car wash chechis ’ – are a “welcome relief”.
We come across two of the chechis – Kumari and Lathakumari near the car park of Technopark’s Nila building, as they’re wrapping up a late breakfast. “Right. Break’s over, off to work now,” says Latha, who, like the more reticent Kumari, is dressed in a sari covered with a bright yellow jacket. Armed with buckets of water, sponges, and car shampoos – their tools of the trade – the duo head off to nearby parking lots, where with the ease that comes with years of practice, they deftly soap the grime off mud-splattered cars. In a matter of minutes they’ve got the cars looking spick and span. They are among 30 women, from in and around Kazhakuttom, who make a living washing the cars of the employees of Technopark. The women work under the umbrella of two car wash agencies operating on campus – Well Care and We Care.
Says Kumari as she scrubs clean the hub-caps of a muddy Maruti Alto: “Most of our customers tell us that they often don’t get the time to wash their cars. So, while they are at work, they entrust their cars with us and we ensure that by the time they leave work to return home, their cars are clean inside and out.” As soon as she is done washing the exteriors of the cars, she’ll move on to dusting and cleaning the interiors. Each one-time car wash session – irrespective of size of car – costs Rs. 150. “We also have a monthly package for permanent customers – numbering around a 1,000 – for who we charge Rs. 450 for cleaning each car, three times a week (Rs. 500 for the first month),” adds Latha. “The work is really not too taxing and we ourselves are responsible for signing on new customers. So that means we get a decent cut for every car that we wash, in addition to our regular monthly salaries. The cut is an added impetus for us to sign on as many customers as possible,” she explains.
The parking lots on Technopark campus is divided into zones A (looked after by the employees of Well Care) and B (by We Care) for the purpose and each is headed by supervisors. The women, all of whom belong to economically disadvantaged families, are mostly in their late 40s/ early 50s. They work from 8 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. every weekday. “Each of us washes around 25 to 30 cars a day,” says Kumari, who hails from Kazhakuttom. She’s been with the agency for seven years now.
The car wash agencies have actually been in business for around eight years. Well Care was started “partly as a business venture and partly as a philanthropic initiative” by Pradeep Kumar, an enterprising ‘Gulf’-returnee. “When I was the maintenance contractor for Technopark, a lot of local women used to come to me with requests for jobs. It got to a point where I couldn’t accommodate all their requests. That’s when I hit upon the idea of a car wash not only as a potential business but also as an employment opportunity for these women, most of whom have not completed their education. With the support of R. Ramachandran, the then estate officer of Technopark, and Chitra, former project engineer, we started off on a one-month trial basis on October 18, 2006, with 12 employees,” says Pradeep. We Care, meanwhile, which was set up later, is run by Pradeep’s wife, Radhika, and her partners, Shafeena and Smitha.
With plans for an automatic car washing facility already in the works at Technopark, aren’t the women a tad apprehensive about the future? “We charge economically for our service and over the years we have proven ourselves to be trustworthy. We believe that our goodwill with our customers will tide us over,” says Kumari, optimistically. Their drive for hard work continues.
