A video of people deep cleaning a heavily soiled bathroom in Australia has been misrepresented on social media as footage from a hotel housing asylum seekers in the UK.
A Facebook post using the clip overlayed it with text saying “UK ASYLUM SEEKER HOTEL CLEANUP”.
Comments alongside the post include remarks such as: “Not capable of living in civilization,” and, “They have no respect for nothing because again everything free.”
But the video shows an apartment in Australia, not the UK, and the cleanup had nothing to do with asylum seekers, the owner of the cleaning service told Reuters.
Arlene Jayne, founder of Mrs Muscle Cleaning, told Reuters over the phone that the video shows her team cleaning an apartment in Malvern, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria.
She said the female occupant reached out directly for help after poor mental health, compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, led to her living in environmental neglect.
The cleaning job was unrelated to asylum seekers, Jayne added.
The original uncropped version of the video is on Jayne’s Instagram account, shared Feb. 18, and makes no mention of asylum seeker hotels in the UK.
The client was not available for comment.
VERDICT
False. The video depicts a cleaning service in an apartment in Melbourne, Australia.