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At nine o’clock in the morning in a garden shed behind a house in Amsterdam, a handful of alcoholics are getting ready to clean the surrounding streets, beer and cigarette in hand.<\/p>\n
For a day’s work, the men receive 10 euros (around $13), a half-packet of rolling tobacco and, most importantly, five cans of beer: two to start the day, two at lunch and one for after work.<\/p>\n
“This group of chronic alcoholics was causing a nuisance in Amsterdam’s Oosterpark: fights, noise, disagreeable comments to women,” said Gerrie Holterman, who heads the Rainbow Foundation project, financed by the Dutch state and donations.<\/p>\n
“The aim is to keep them occupied, to get them doing something so they no longer cause trouble at the park,” she told AFP.<\/p>\n
The alcoholics are split into two groups of around 10 people, with each group working three days a week.<\/p>\n
The imaginative approach to the problem of anti-social behaviour demonstrates typical Dutch pragmatism which could be found shocking in other countries, but not here.<\/p>\n
The day begins at around 9:00 am, with the workers drinking two beers and some coffee, if desired, before going to clean the streets.<\/p>\n
Sat at a large table, Gerrie carefully notes each person’s beer consumption, but there is an atmosphere of trust: if she gets called away, the alcoholics themselves record how much they have drunk.<\/p>\n
“I think I can speak for the group and say that if they didn’t give us beers then we wouldn’t come,” said Frank, wearing a fluorescent street cleaner’s bib and carrying a bin bag and litter-grabber.<\/p>\n
“We need alcohol to function, that’s the disadvantage of chronic alcoholism,” said the 45-year-old, somewhat fatalistically.<\/p>\n
Frank says he has been jailed for violence, has never worked for anyone and has no fixed abode.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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