City Denies Sky Is Swept By Hand

A three-month investigation into Lakshmi Rim’s self-cleaning sky dome has confirmed that three hundred workers manually wipe sulfuric acid off the overhead glass with long mops.

Internal maintenance logs show wiper crews working twelve-hour shifts on suspended catwalks six hundred metres above the central plaza, pushing felt pads to clear yellow foam. City promotional material continues to advertise the glass dome as an automated shield cleaned by sound pulses.

Asked whether three hundred staff were scrubbing the sky, supervisor Tarek Al-Hassan said the glass got dirty every morning, and that wiping it was the only way to see through it. Asked about the acid dripping onto plaza benches below, Al-Hassan said the roof was round.

"Liquid goes to the bottom," he said. "That is how shapes work."

The city board issued a statement on Thursday denying that any manual labour occurs above the plaza.

"Our sky system is entirely automated," said city director Nidhi Varma. "Any shapes seen against the glass are light reflections from ground traffic."

On Friday, ground staff in rubber suits unrolled mats across the central square to catch the steady yellow drip from above.