The managing director of a Melbourne cleaning company who was contracted to clean the city’s Metro trains during COVID has been caught allegedly telling an employee to wipe the train carriages with dirty rags in order to extend their contract.
News.com.au reports that the company, Transclean, was paid $1.3 million a month to clean trains last year during COVID in an effort to improve the cleanliness of public transport amid the pandemic.
The inquiry revealed that Transclean had been using a disinfectant product between February and April that required staff to clean the trains twice daily. When Metro tried to implement a trial of a cleaning product that would last longer, and therefore require less work for the independent company, managing director George Haritos allegedly hatched a plan to stop this.
A corruption inquiry has heard that Haritos was allegedly caught in a phone recording telling his employee, who happens to be his nephew, to clean the trains using rags that had been soaked in bin juice in order to score more work for the company.
In phone recordings played at the hearing, Haritos can allegedly be heard telling his nephew, Steve Kyritsis, to douse rags in bin juice, then use them to clean train surfaces and therefore “contaminate” the trains to make the new cleaning product less effective.
At one point, he even allegedly instructed Kyritsis to wipe the buttons and the microphone in the drivers’ cabs.
In the recording, Haritos could allegedly be heard saying “tomorrow night will be a good time to contaminate the trains,” adding: “Maybe not stench, but you know, the rubbish, the household rubbish.”
“And leave it in your bin, put in a bag and give it tomorrow,” Haritos can allegedly be heard saying, to which his nephew allegedly responded: “Yeah. Might do the dishes with it.”
Haritos then allegedly replied: “Dishes, may, and then put a little bit in the bin.”
“They wont need much, because it, it’ll just be a trace. That’s why, if you put too much on it, it’ll be obvious that it’s exploded, and they do tests all the time, so they’ll know what’s in a normal range,” Kyritsis allegedly said.
Prior to the phone calls being played, Kyritsis said that the description of the calls “rang a bell,” then after they were played, he allegedly said he “remembered it now”.
News.com.au report that the hearings are still ongoing.
