BENGALURU: In many ways, Mithun Rai’s job was as bad as manual scavenging. The 25-year-old ragpicker from West Bengal died last Tuesday when a BBMP vehicle offloaded tons of garbage on him at Bellahalli landfill near Bagalur in North Bengaluru.
Mithun would usually rummage through small piles of garbage to find recyclable material which he would sell to factories. But it didn’t pay him much. While Mithun’s case was a rare one, the plight of a majority of ragpickers in the city, an estimated 25,000, is deplorable.
Sugandhi, in her late 20s, starts her day at 5am, rummaging through garbage for recyclable objects before the BBMP vehicle arrives. Without any protective gear, identity proof or uniform, residents never trust her and hence, police ask her not to venture to certain places. But she has to keep frequenting the garbage dumps as she has no other source of income. What she gets out of picking waste is a meagre `100-`200 per day.
Manjanna (28) too has the same routine and income. “With the job comes ill heath. I would often fall sick. Over this, the police would frequently harass me regarding my identity.”
A lot of ragpickers — about 10,000 of them according to an NGO — have been moved to other jobs with better work conditions and pay, where their knowledge of identifying recyclable waste from garbage is utilised.
Dr H Ravikumar of KC General Hospital said that in the absence of protective gear like gloves, gumboot and masks, ragpickers face risks of infection and air-borne diseases like TB. He added, “In case the ragpicker has a wound, they are all the more susceptible to getting infected.”
A lot of efforts have been made by NGO Hasiru Dala (Green Force), sometimes in collaboration with the government, to stop the practice in its current form. The NGO, among other initiatives, has arranged jobs at waste management centres of residential societies and office buildings for over 7,000 waste pickers, who have also been provided identity cards.
Nalini Shekar, the founder, said one of their new methods is to teach them to grow mushrooms at their homes, as it is a cheap source of protein. She said, “There are an estimated 25,000 ragpickers in the city, and we have contacted only 10,000 of them. There is still a lot of work to be done, especially now, as with lesser waste on the streets, waste pickers will find it tougher.”
Speaking about the incident which claimed Mithun’s life, Nalini said similar incidents had occurred in other cities too. A different system should be adopted where dumping vehicles either stop outside the dumping zone for some time or dump a part of the garbage outside from where ragpickers can do their jobs safely, she felt.