RAWALPINDI: Eidul Azha provided an opportunity to Shahida Bibi to make a good money from entrails of the animal during the last three days.

Sifting through the garbage, 24-year-old Shahida Bibi wanted to collect as many as possible the waste of animals.

Despite celebrating Eid with her family, she spent three days in collecting the ‘valuable’ from the animal waste.

“I collected the waste and sell it for Rs100. The people have established makeshift camps along the bank of Leh Nullah near Javed Colony, Hazara Colony and Khyaban-i-Sir Syed to purchase the wast and then transport it to factories in Sialkot and Gujranwala where they are turned into threads and other material,” she said.

She said so far she had earned Rs1,000-Rs1,200 per day from the waste.

“I brought my two children also for this work who managed to earn Rs300 per day,” she said and added that they worked till afternoon and in the evening they collected the meat from visiting door-to-door.

She said that the money and meat would be enough for her family at least for a month. To a question, she said since they did not have refrigerator she dried meat in the sun to preserve it for future use.

Pervaiz Khan, a resident of Railway Road Katchi Abadi near slaughterhouse, said before Eid, some people came to him and handed him a contract of collecting entrails from different garbage dumping sites of the city and gave Rs10,000 in advance.

He said that he involved his three brothers and two sons in the business and had been collecting the waste for the two days. Mr Khan was delighted with the earning he made from the waste during the Eid days.

He said that their women and girls had collected enough meat for next one month.

Some nomads also collected fat from the animals waste. The animal’s fat is used in making soap and oil.

Small factories in this regard have been set up in Hazara Colony, Pirwadhai and Khyaban-i-Sir Syed to the nuisance of the local residents.

The foul smell from burning fat emitted from these factories is intolerable for the residents of the area.

But the City District Government Rawalpindi (CDGR), Health and Environment departments have failed to sort out the issue. The officials never visited the areas and even did not take notice of the complaints submitted by the residents of these localities.

Riaz Mir, a resident of Satellite Town near 6th Road, said that the sanitary workers did not visit his area during first two days and the local people managed to arrange private workers to clear the area from offal.

“Due to heaps of animal waste, many nomads were witnessed in the area to collect entrails from the waste after sifting through the animal waste which created foul smell in the area,” he said.

Published in Dawn, October 9th , 2014