Foreign Pavilions Bewail Cleaning Cost

By MARTIN TOLCHIN

The high cost of housekeeping may prevent some foreign pavilions at the World's Fair from reopening next year.

The pavilions have found that officials of the fair who helped them draw up maintenance budgets grossly underestimated the costs.

The Malaysian Pavilion, which budgeted $500 a month for maintenance, is spending $600 a month just for window-washers.

"It's possible that we won't come back next year," said Ng Ufong, pavilion director.

The Allied Maintenance Corporation told the pavilion that its lawn, which is 15 by 60 feet, would require six hours of mowing, three hours of trimming, two hours of watering and one hour of weeding each week.

The well-trod turf has gone unattended.

Other foreign pavilions expressed resentment at the high maintenance costs.

The Jordan Pavilion has found that such costs were 10 times what it expected, according to Ghaleb Barakt, the pavilion's commissioner general. The Jordanians were outraged at having to pay $116 for two men to unload three desks from a truck -- a job, they contend, that took five minutes.

The Japan Pavilion, which budgeted $2,000 a month for the maintenance of each of its three buildings, is spending $5,000 a month. Pavilion officials recently installed a safe, accompanied by two teamsters who charged $60 to walk behind them, according to B. Yoshioka, treasurer of the Japanese Exhibitors Association.

An Asian Pavilion official complained: "We are unable to obtain the standard of cleaning that we are used to."

But Leo Strauss of Allied Maintenance said that this was sometimes the pavilion's fault. He said the officials of one foreign pavilion washed their feet in the toilet, dampening the floors.

The Sierra Leone Pavilion definitely will not reopen next year, officials have said. They explained that the decision had been made by their nation's Parliament when it agreed to exhibit at the fair, but they contended that they had found maintenance costs much higher than they had expected.

The Pakistan Pavilion's operating costs are running more than three times above its budget of $15,000 for the season. Ali Murtaza, pavilion director, called the maintenance costs "exorbitant" and asserted: "Allied Maintenance should have some competition."

The Allied corporation provides maintenance workers to all pavilions who do not have maintenance personnel on their own payroll. Mr. Strauss said that the company had no objection in any pavilion's awarding its cleaning contract to another concern.

He gave the following breakdown of the $4.21 hourly rate charged for a night cleaner's work: salary, $2.33; other labor costs (insurance, withholding, personnel) $1.128; supplies 18 cents; uniforms 4 cents, and profits, 29 cents (7 per cent).

"The foreigner sometimes doesn't realize that labor in his country that costs 35 cents an hour cost $3.50 here," Mr. Strauss said.

Gen. W. E. Potter, the fair's executive vice president, said that the pavilions were initially advised to allocate one-third of their total budget for operating costs; one-third for construction and one-third for exhibits.

At the Sudan Pavilion, which rejected the services of Allied Maintenance at a monthly cost of $1,095, the officials clean their own premises.

Officials of other pavilions said they frequently worked after hours with brooms and mops.

All express amazement at American unions.

"When the invitation was extended to us at a very high level, we were never told about these difficulties," a Pakistani said.

"We didn't understand," confessed a Japanese official. "There are no unions in Japan."