After more than a decade out of work because of a back injury and chronic alcoholism, Fred Schiphorst finally landed a job last year and is determined to keep it. He gets up at 5.30am, walks his dog and then puts on a red tie, ready to clean litter from the streets of eastern Amsterdam.
His workday begins unfailingly at 9am, with two cans of beer, a down payment on a salary paid mostly in alcohol. He gets two more cans at lunch and then another can or, if all goes smoothly, two to round off a productive day.
"I'm not proud of being an alcoholic, but I am proud to have a job again," said Mr Schiphorst, the grateful beneficiary of an unusual government-funded programme to lure alcoholics off the streets by paying them in beer to pick up trash. In addition to beer, each member of the cleaning team gets half a packet of rolling tobacco, free lunch and 10 euros (S$17) a day.
The programme, started last year by the Rainbow Foundation, a private but mostly government funded organisation that helps the homeless, drug addicts and alcoholics get back on their feet, is so popular that there is a long waiting list of chronic alcoholics eager to join the beer-fulled cleaning teams.
Thoughts:
- I think while this is an innovative way to solve the local problem of alcoholics and homeless people to get back on their feet, there might be some bureaucratic resistance to such ideas as alcoholics and tobacco might be seen as sinful items that we should not use as it is harmful to the body.
- But that said, if the public is acceptable of such ideas and it has proven results, I do not see any harm of it too! Public opinion does matter a lot!
Thoughts anyone?
Yours,
Something Small Thinking Big
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