March 16, 2006

Ragpickers are a highly productive and useful part of society, their deplorable working and living conditions notwithstanding. So much so that they have gained institutional status under the formal nomenclature of ragpickers. If it wasn’t for this underclass, the burgeoning mega-metropolises of the world, especially Asia, would drown in a sea of garbage

Grown up in well-heeled circumstances, naughty children, more prone to playing than studying are often admonished with the reprimand that, if they do not mend their ways, they will be consigned in life to playing in the garbage heaps of the world. That is about as low a level as one can sink to, it appears.

Well, there are a fairly large number of children and adults who spend their days eking out an honest living rummaging about in the garbage dumps. Soiled and dirty, with no visible signs of advancement onto higher levels of livelihood, they are nonetheless a proud and happy people, and not the ‘miserable bums’ that the more fortunate in society are quick to label them as.

In fact, they are a highly productive and useful part of society, their deplorable working and living conditions notwithstanding. So much so that they have gained institutional status under the formal nomenclature of ragpickers. If it weren’t for this underclass, the burgeoning mega-metropolises of the world, especially Asia, would drown in a sea of garbage.

The only time, perhaps, when their dignity takes a hit is when they gather for a free meal at roadside hotels, and are made to eat on the pavements in sub-human conditions. Their deiras, or place of residence, is in the informal housing sector, also known as ‘katchi abadis’, and hygiene is a major issue with insufficient potable water, open sewers, and accumulated filth providing a continuum between their working and domestic lives.

In Karachi the contrast is stark, especially in the up-market affluent housing estates where the informal and formal housing sectors cohabit. Such a hutment exists with about 50 huts accommodating on average 10 men, women and children to each. It is situated on the banks of the ironically named Nehar-e-Khayyam, a very large open sewer that runs through the chic Clifton area, and empties into the Boating Basin. Pir Bux and Sakina have been collecting and sorting garbage here long before the area caught the eye of commercial developers. She still cooks her food the old fashioned way, balancing her pot on two stones while she stokes a wood and coal fire underneath it.

The land belongs to the government, and these dwellers can never hope to own their own little plot, specially not in this neighbourhood. The glitzy development all around not withstanding, the Nehar-e-Khayyam is prime breeding ground for flies and mosquitoes. But these residents seem oblivious of their presence, until, of course, when sickness strikes and the trips to the doctor wipe off their meager earnings. A state of perpetual destitution appears to be their lot, but within it they seem to be happy and content.

Abdul Ghafoor has his jhuggi (hut) a short walk from Pir Bux, and has been here since two years before ‘Zulfiqar Bhutto came asking for votes’. That would put it in the vicinity of 1970. The people here are émigrés from Multan and Bahawalpur, attracted by the freedom that the big city affords, even if it means living on the sewer. Abdul Ghafoor has lived to a ripe old age, and is full of earthy wisdom that only the university of hard knocks can imbibe. Children are everywhere, barefoot and half naked. In the midst of such grinding poverty one would imagine that they would exercise more restraint in the act of procreation. Perhaps it is a sign of their unshakeable faith in destiny that makes for this carefree environment.

What immediately catches one’s attention are the expensive and palatial properties along whose boundary walls this hutment exists. The upside to it is the tolerance exhibited by the rich towards the poor. The downside is a severe indictment of the rich for permitting such squalor to exist in their immediate environment, and not proactively improving the living conditions of their poor neighbours.

Architect Aali Qayyum did a report on the ragpickers in 1986, working with Power Recovery Systems in the USA. To his surprise Aali found the major garbage dumps in the neighbourhood all empty! “Wiped clean! During the three years that I had been away in the USA there had been a major influx of young Afghans into the city. In the early morning the garbage dumps would be packed with them, sifting through the trash dumped there overnight by the residents.” Poverty in the country creates its own garbage collection and disposal system, says Aali. “It becomes a means of livelihood for people. There is plenty to go around considering the tremendous increase in consumer products and their packaging.”

Recent times have seen the organising of garbage collection along attempted scientific and mechanised lines under the umbrella of solid waste management. Large corporations like the NJC Waste Management Systems have moved into this line of work, signing formal contracts with Town Councils in Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad. It has 2200 employees and a fleet of 215 trucks, and faces some serious problems with ragpickers who compete with it for the choicest garbage. It is a clear case of the early bird catching the early worm, and the ragpickers are completely conversant with NJC’s door-to-door pick up schedules, and beat them to it, quite literally. “Last year we had a case of one ragpicker hitting an NJC employee on the head with a stone resulting in his instant death,” says an official of NJC. “Over 80 per cent of the ragpickers are Afghans, and they are encouraged by a lack of municipal laws.”

Majeed is 14 years old, and operates from under the Kaalapul Bridge, adjacent to the railway tracks. His family of eight brothers and four sisters hails from Bagram in Afghanistan, but Majeed was born in Pakistan, and has been working as a ragpicker ever since he can remember. Majeed’s working day starts before dawn and ends at 10 at night, or thereabouts, and he roams the city streets all day long on his specially fitted trash collection bicycle. He is looking for cardboard and bread scraps, and anything else that will fetch him a few pennies. Once the large polypropylene sack mounted on his bicycle is full, Majeed returns to the collection point to stash his loot, and returns to scavenge some more.

During the course of the day he manages two to three such forays that earn him between 150 and 200 rupees per day. This money remains with the contractor till the time when Majeed’s father comes from Afghanistan to collect it. He pays 1500 rupees per month for his accommodation. However, breakfast, lunch and dinner are free for Majeed and his fellow ragpickers in one of the neighbourhood market’s roadside hotels funded from the charity of God fearing citizens.

Majeed is not content with his fate and would like to return to Afghanistan and do something that is less filthy and more dignified. He says he would like to get educated, and learn to drive a truck someday. Mateen is also from Bagram in Afghanistan, but was born in Quetta. Life in Quetta is tough and so he decided to settle in Karachi with its benign weather and plenty of earning opportunity. Mateen earns over 300 rupees per day collecting plastic waste.

Mohammed Gul is 16 years old and was born in Quetta, but his family’s village is in Maimana in Afghanistan, a three days ride from Kabul. He has been in Karachi for the last 10 years or so, and has never been to his village during this time. Gul forages for paper and bottles that sell for 90 rupees a maund. His operating base is in Azam Basti where the contractor sorts out what Gul collects. He pays 2000 rupees per month for his accommodation, with five other ragpickers as roommates. A gallon of water costs Gul five rupees, and he manages a bath once a week, twice if he is lucky. He doesn’t do drugs, but confesses to being partial to ‘gutka’, a beetlenut based concoction described as hazardous to human health.

Three to four trips a day fetch Gul between 200 to 250 rupees that he saves to send home. Like the other two, Gul’s meals are free. Unlike Majeed, however, Gul is quite content with what he does, and sees himself progressing onto becoming a garbage contractor one day. “I have a lot of independence and freedom, and nobody screaming and shouting at me to work quicker or better.” Every two to three months Gul returns to Quetta by bus to visit his family, a trip that sets him back by 700 rupees or so. He estimates that there are between 100,000 and 200,000 ragpickers in Karachi, a statistic that the Sindh Bureau of Statistics can choose to contest if it so desires.

Depending on which side of the fence the issue is viewed from, the ragpicker is both an asset and a liability for society. He is a rather ‘in-your-face’ manifestation of child labour, deprived of a normal childhood. But then the great Afghan tragedy ensured that entire generations would grow up in abnormal and traumatic circumstances. We, in Karachi, who host this disadvantaged segment of the population would earn a lot of brownie points with the Lord by engaging with these children of the street, and lifting their quality of life no matter how momentarily.
 

A recycling pyramid

The private sector involved in recycling waste includes ragpickers, middlemen, transporters, and finally, reprocessors. In terms of human resources this sector is arranged with ragpickers at the bottom of the pyramid and forming the backbone of waste collection. At the thinner end of the wedge are the small middlemen, who buy the waste from these ragpickers and sell it to larger middlemen who deal with specific items and materials. Above them are factories, who procure supplies from the godowns through omnipresent agents. There is a range of material that is picked up and recycled by this sector. It includes plastics, paper, glass, and metals. With a large woven sack flung on his shoulder, a ragpicker begins work early, because otherwise, he’ll miss the waste. As a resident, one begins to recognize his ragpicker, because the routes are totally territorial. By the late afternoon, or whenever the bag is full, the ragpicker returns to the store of a middleman, also called kabari, and sells his collection. The waste should be sorted out according to almost 30 different types of plastics, paper, and metals. They must be clean and dry, or the kabari won’t accept them. There are little segregation patches in secret corners of the city, where thousands of the poorest sort out waste. From makeshift water sources, they might even wash them. Hunched over for hours, the poor undertake what the privileged preach: segregation of waste. If the privileged had done this themselves, the poor would have less cuts, burns, backaches, allergies, dog-bites, respiratory disorders.  —A.A.

 

The bane of plastic

Ragpicker Mohammed Yunus has graduated to scouring the streets for the more profitable sackcloth. “A few years ago, I had to stumble around for a whole day before I could collect a kilogramme of thin plastic bags which fetched only Rs1.50.” He now earns Rs150 a day collecting cloth. And then you realise why the thin plastic bags lie around waiting to get into sewer lines or dirty the roads. It’s because no self-respecting ragpicker is willing to touch them. As any one of them will tell you, it takes a day of back-breaking effort to collect 1,000 bags to make a waist-high saleable kilo. “It’s just not worth the effort,’’ says ragpicker Abdul Rahim, who’s picking up the thicker plastic bags. Ragpickers have welcomed the government’s proposal to ban thin carry bags and instead introduce the thicker bags of a minimum thickness of 80 gauge. “It will make our job far easier,’’ Rahim says. Squatting on his pavement shop, a wizened sixty-something scrap trader Abdul Haq has had enough of the thin plastic bag. “Yeh jhabla nahin, jhamela hain,’’ curses the grizzle bearded trader, separating the carry bags from a mound of plastic waste. The rest of the plastic is sold to bigger traders, but as the thin bags are a strict no-no, Haq has to separate them from his precious pile. The thick plastic bags are melted down into little pellets, the raw material for a thriving industry which makes buckets, pipes and footwear out of them. But the thin bags sit in a sack on his roof. “Small shop owners like us don’t buy these bags, nobody wants them,’’ scrap dealer Abdul Hamid adds. “The government must ban these bags. When factories stop producing thin bags, the public will automatically stop using them,’’ Haq advises. He then goes on to extol the virtues of paper bags to curious bystanders. “The paper at least gets dissolved in water, but not these plastic bags.’’ — A.A.

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