Ride-on sweeper. [Photo by Xia Shengquan]

As soon as Autumn arrives, the whole street is soon covered with fallen leaves, greatly adding to the burden felt by the street cleaning staff.

To solve this problem, East District has recently purchased a number of modern cleaning units, including ride-on sweepers, backpack dust-removing blowers, stainless steel dust collectors, lift pumps, etc. The administrators have selected six densely-populated communities as demonstration sites to use the machines.

In Qiwan Community, a ride-on sweeper was seen at work. It is small in size with a width of over one meter and a length of less than two meters. The sweeper is operated by trained drivers, and it is used in streets and alleys.

"The ride-on sweeper's compact size makes it easy to operate, and it can keep working for 8 consecutive hours on a single charge. Manual cleaning is required for the gaps which are difficult to reach," said Wu Xiliang, Party Committee Secretary of Qiwan Community.

Qiwan Community currently has a permanent population of over 20,000, with only 64 cleaning staff. Thanks to the new ride-on sweeper, man and machine now ease the cleaning burden, reduce dust pollution, and increase cleaning effectiveness.

It is known that after the six pilot areas in East District accumulate enough experience, the machines will be gradually introduced to the other 4 communities. Improving the efficiency and mechanization of sanitation operations will help strengthen the achievements made for the National Civilized City construction and increase citizens' satisfaction of urban environmental sanitation.