RAWALPINDI, Oct 18: Mohammad Yousuf, 10, sifts through the heaps of garbage dumped along Chaudhry Bostan Ali Khan Road in search of animal entrails and other waste.

“I have sold so many intestines and other waste and earned more than Rs1,000 in a single day,” says Yousuf. He adds that his mother works as a construction labourer to support his three brothers and two sisters.

“Being a single parent, my mother always works hard and we have decided to help her. Me and my brother collected entrails and sold it for Rs80 each animal’s waste.”

Yousuf sees no work during the next few days but says the money earned from the sale of the entrails would be enough to run their kitchen. In the meantime, his two sisters were visiting door-to-door from Car Chowk to Chaklala Scheme-III to collect sacrificial meat. “This will also be enough for us to enjoy the festival for a few days.”

During Eidul Azha, poor people collect animal entrails and sell it to traders who supply it to different factories.

Most of the collectors, especially nomads, enter residential areas to collect the waste. One can see poor children aged between five and 12 years gathering around an animal being sacrificed to collect its waste and meat.

However, some children faced problems when the middle men of the factories snatched the waste from them. “Last year, some people snatched whatever I had collected from the garbage but this year my father is with me. I collect the waste and my father sells it to the traders,” said Bashir, a child collecting animal waste at Raja Bazaar.

He added that some of his colleagues were lucky enough as they also got animal hides and sold it to leather traders at Jamia Masjid Road.

But the nomads created problems for the administration because they collected the animal waste and stored it in their slums especially along the nullahs.

“We established points in different areas to collect the offal and other animal waste and transport it to the Losar landfill site but the nomads spread the waste all over the road in search of intestines and other waste. We pushed them away as they tore apart the offal which created problems for the residents,” said Dr Mazhar Azeem, the district officer solid waste management, while talking to Dawn.

“Some nomads at Javed Colony near Rawalpindi Medical College stored the waste in their katchi abadis and created a foil smell in the whole area.”

The official added that his department had lodged an FIR with the Waris Khan police against the nomads for creating problems for the citizens.

He said the sanitation department collected over 17,500 tons of animal waste from across the city. The animal waste was shifted to a ‘transfer station’ near Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench building before being disposed of at the Losar landfill site. He said the transfer station was cleared of all the waste on Friday evening.