ISLAMABAD: Usually at night one comes across mainly teenage garbage pickers carrying big sacks and torches that are fixed to their caps. They are usually looking for items like plastic utensils, glass, metals, paper and cartons from the garbage dumps in the residential and commercial areas of the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

The majority of garbage pickers are children and many are Afghan nationals who live in the outskirts of the city in shanties. Most of these children are contributing to the income of their families in order to make ends meet. Some are seen walking from one garbage dump to another holding big plastic sacks on their shoulders in search of saleable items.

Besides the ordeal of working for 10 to 12 hours a day they are faced with multiple problems including serious health hazards because of their direct contact with the garbage that contains multiple germs. And the most dangerous of all is the infectious hospital waste which is being dumped along with the municipal waste across the twin cities’ dumping points.

Most of the garbage pickers are around 12 to 15 years of age, thus falling in the purview of child labour. But the authorities concerned seem unmoved on tackling the serious issue.

When contacted the Child Protection Bureau officials said they could not stop the underage garbage pickers from their difficult and hazardous job, as some of them are the sole bread-earners of their families. The officials further said the authorities did not have enough resources to stop the kids from this work.

One of the officials at the bureau claimed that stopping these children from scavenging was not the solution to the problem. The real issue is poverty and without eradicating poverty the kids cannot be stopped from this job. He suggested the parents of these children be provided proper jobs, and only then they could be asked to stop sending their children for the hazardous job.

Some of the kids while scavenging through garbage dumps have contracted contagious diseases as they generally do not wear gloves, masks and proper shoes for the job. Most of them scavenge through garbage with bare hands and sometimes get cuts or injure their hands resulting in hepatitis B and C infections.

Making ends meet

Gul Khan, 15, lives in the slums near Motorway Chowk. Along with his younger brother Hamid, who is 12, he leaves home daily in the evening on his motorcycle-driven cart in search of saleable plastic, metal and other items.

“I usually scavenge the dumps at the main Peshawar Road up to the Saddar Market area”, Gul Khan said adding that they mostly sell the collected items for about Rs1,000 to Rs1,200 per day. “It takes us seven to eight hours to complete the task”, admitting that in severe cold the job is tougher.

Besides collecting the reusable items like plastic, paper and metals some of the scavengers also collect vegetable and fruit remains and peels. When one of the scavengers, collecting the fruits peels and residue of vegetables, was asked what he would do with it he replied that he was collecting this to feed his goats and cow. He said they rear animals and sell them near Eidul Azha to make extra money.

Gul Khan informed Bol News that their family had migrated from a remote village, located at the outskirts of Bajaur, when the Taliban were on the rampage in the area. Since then they had been living in a mud dwelling near Motorway Chowk.

He was worried that in case they have to move from their temporary settlement, life would become tougher as they did not have enough money to purchase even a small piece of land to live. He said that his father was crippled and could not do any job while his two elder sisters along with his mother stay at home and when he and his brother bring back the collected pieces from the garbage, his sisters and father segregate the collected items because the separated plastic, metal and paper fetch them good price.

Furthermore, he said that plastic items are sold for around Rs45 to Rs50 per kilogram while selling metal pieces fetches them around Rs100 to Rs120 per kg. Paper is usually sold for Rs20 per kg.

Another scavenger, Ghazni Khan, who is 18, informed that he was living with his family in the katchi abadi (slum) behind British Homes. He also drives a motorbike-driven cart and collects the residue of vegetables, plastic items and other saleable material as well.

He said that he owns 10 goats and collects the peels of fruits from the garbage to feed them while he collects other saleable items to meet his basic needs. He also said that he mainly comes to the garbage dumps of the main city areas and vegetable market near the I.J. Principal Road.

He informed that since the pandemic, the number of scavengers has increased considerably as many had lost their jobs due to the crisis.

Furthermore, he said that more than half a dozen people living in the shanties in his neighbourhood, who earlier had jobs in the Sabzi Mandi but were left jobless in the Covid-hit time, have turned to scavenging.

There is no proper data of underage scavengers in the big cities of the country but some studies conducted by non-governmental organizations showed that a number of scavengers in the five major cities including Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad, Islamabad and Peshawar are between 115,000 to 200,000. And the study also revealed that the majority of the scavengers are of Pashtun and Afghan origin.

Although the law prohibits child labour, due to sheer poverty the children are left with little options. The Child Protection Bureau needs to take serious measures in this regard, to help rescue these minors from such a hazardous profession.