Street cleaners in China forced to wear GPS trackers to ensure they don't take too many breaks

Street cleaners in one city in China are being given GPS tracking units to ensure that they work efficiently.

What? How do they do that?

The new GPS trackers have been given to 500 street cleaners in the city of Nanjing in the Jiangsu province in eastern China. The bracelets monitor the activity of the workers and track how long they stay in each place. Monitors in a command center show icons indicating where each worker is currently located.

"It will shout 'Please continue working! Keep it up!'," one street cleaner told reporters, according to the Daily Mail. "There is a big screen somewhere that shows all our locations. If we still fail to move after the alarm goes off, our managers will come and find us."

This alarm function was reportedly disabled, but the tracker still transmits the workers' locations, and notifies their supervisors if it seems like the workers aren't moving enough. Another street cleaner complained that he now had to walk up and down clean streets, just to keep the system from triggering.

The Daily Mail reported, citing Jiangsu City Channel, that the trackers have been in place since September. The company's vice president of the monitoring company said that since the trackers are only active while the street cleaners have clocked into work, he does not view this as a privacy violation.

What else?

China has been increasing its ability to keep tabs on its citizens. Last year, China instituted a nationwide scoring program, which can ban people from flying or traveling by train if their "social credit" drops too low.

In February, Chinese officials refused to let a U.S.-born Chinese actress leave the country after her social credit score dropped because she allegedly slandered her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend on social media.