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‘Star’ of the show: Durga Pokhrey, from Nepal, is described by parking contractor NSL as ‘a real success story’ and has already been promoted’ |
C4 turns cameras on mean streets and plight of wardens
A Cutting Edge fly-on-the-wall documentary highlights levels of abuse suffered by staff
“IN England, there is the value of human beings, they are very amiable, they are very kind hearted, they are very easy to help and they are very courteous,” proclaims Durga Pokhrey with endearing naivety, as he takes in the madness of Piccadilly Circus, 11 days after arriving from his native Nepal.
The family man, who has read the complete works of Shakespeare, speaks four languages and has a masters in Sanskrit literature, had obviously not heard about that great English tribe: the p***** off, foul-mouthed, white van man.
But he was about to.
Durga is the star of upcoming fly-on-the-wall documentary, Confessions of a Parking Warden, due to be shown on Channel 4 next Thursday at 9pm.
Viewers follow camera-strapped wardens onto the streets of Westminster as they go about their day. The programme chronicles the shocking levels of abuse and threats they are subjected to, with insults hurled out on a daily basis to the 200-odd wardens working for the council’s private parking contractor NSL Services.
Close to 90 per cent are immigrants with little English, £7 an hour is their reward and they are given just six days’ training in a basement in Victoria before being let loose.
Some leave, but most just shrug their shoulders and accept the casual racism and even death threats as “part of the job”.
As one warden, Nigeria-born Alex who is studying to be a mental health nurse, says: “What can I do? The police told me if anyone insults you it’s not an offence. It’s because I’m in this uniform”.
West End Extra was shown the programme, part of the Cutting Edge series, after its producer read our coverage of Westminster wardens last month.
Meanwhile all is not well with Durga.
Initially enthusiastic (“I can be useful in England” he says expectantly); we find him dejected, ashamed and angry by the end of his three-month journey to being a fully paid-up City of Westminster warden.
He complains that the job has forced him to become a different person – devious, cruel and immoral. He is no longer Durga, he is WS5957 and he had become obsessed with issuing tickets.
“You should kill your emotion. You should be professional. You should be functional. You should be mechanic. I want to empathise…
“That is the obstruction. I empathise with the public but the public misunderstands me. And this conflict sometimes places a man in a very terrible situation.
“To be or not to be, this is the question? It’s a Shakespearean question. And my question is like that. To issue or not to issue a PCN [penalty charge notice]?”
Confessions of a Parking Warden took six months to shoot and was filmed with the permission of Westminster Council and NSL.
While it undoubtedly evokes sympathy for the wardens, it also touches on some more uncomfortable areas for management. Both the council and NSL have denied wardens are pressured into issuing tickets.
Producer Olly Lambert, said he wanted to capture “the immigrant experience”.
“For me this was always a film about immigrants. I think it really holds up a mirror to England. The idea that others have of us, and that many of us have of ourselves: tolerant, stiff upper lip, fair and welcoming. It’s not really true.
“Few people have ever had a conversation with a warden who isn’t already a warden. I wanted to speak to these invisible people, find out about who they were, about their lives and what they wanted. I set out to find out about the men behind the uniforms but more and more I felt ashamed about what they were learning about us.”
Tim Cowen of NSL said: “It is generally a positive profile although some of the depiction of abuse – often racial – that our staff receive is quite shocking.
“Sadly such abuse is a reality in our business and although generally attitudes towards parking officers and the important job they do have improved a lot, there is still a minority of people out there who regard this sort of behaviour as acceptable.
“When one former NSL CEO [warden] spoke to them suggesting he was being given a financial incentive to issue a certain number of PCNs we were naturally concerned, since that is not our policy and such practices are illegal in any case…
“We were relieved but unsurprised to find in two detailed investigations that the claims were false, and were made by a former employee with a serious but unfounded grievance against us and a desire to make us look bad… We explained this to C4 and we would have preferred them to drop that section, since we felt we demonstrated fairly clearly that the claims were nonsense.
“While we are disappointed that C4 did not drop that section – although they do concede in the programme that they could not tell if he was lying or not, and also included a section making it clear that we have investigated the allegation and found it to be malicious and untrue – we think other than that they did a good job and we are pleased with the result.”
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