Confessions of a Traffic Warden, Thursday 8pm, Channel 4
Posted by Jane Murphy
Who’d be a traffic warden, eh? You spend your entire working day wandering from one confrontation to the next - while running the risk of being sworn at, spat on, racially abused and physically assaulted. Olly Lambert’s eye-opening documentary brought home the reality of the job as he spent six months filming with wardens in Westminster.
Responsibility for managing the London council’s multi-million-pound parking enforcement operation has been farmed out to private contractor NSL. Last year alone, the 650-strong workforce issued more than £80m worth of parking fines. Meanwhile, each “civil enforcement officer” earns £7 per hour. Around 90% of recruits are immigrants or foreign nationals - and for many of them, this job is their first taste of Britain.
Much of the programme followed the progress of Durga Pokhrel (above), an eager-to-please, well-educated Anglophile from Nepal, who landed a traineeship from NSL within days of arriving in the UK. Despite the fact that ticket targets were made illegal in 2008, Durga still felt pressure to issue as many fines as possible. All too predictably, he made mistakes and became disillusioned - admitting he felt “ashamed” at his performance.
“To do this job, you have to kill your emotion,” he realised. “I want to empathise. The public misunderstand me.” At the end of the programme, he was given a full-time position. I really hope he later told NSL where to stick their job then ran away to pursue a successful career in academia - but somehow I doubt it…
Overall, this was a thoroughly depressing - although not really that surprising - look at a system that appears to fail both the public and its employees on many levels. But does anybody at Westminster care just so long as the money keeps on rolling in from those fines?
So what did you think of Confessions of a Traffic Warden? Have your say here.
Picture: Channel 4
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