TWO months ago, a fleet of hydraulictrucks of a private company started collectinggarbage from homes in manyareas of Nagpur. The trucks transportthe garbage directly to the landfill sitemanaged by another private company.This privatization of garbage collectionhas alarmed some 5,000 ragpickers whoearn their living by rummaging throughthe city's bins and dump yards. They arelikely to lose income.
The new garbage management system,Bin Free City project, is meant toreduce the litter on the streets by doingaway with municipal bins. Already, thenumber of bins has been reduced from300 to 200. "The bins will be retainedonly in commercial areas once the projectbecomes fully operational over thenext 18 months," said M R Ganvir, headof the municipal corporation's healthdepartment. According to rough estimates400-700 ragpickers retrieve recyclablewaste from the city's main dumpyardat Bhandewadi, another 4,000 peoplesift garbage in the bins, a few collectgarbage door-to-door and 800 dealersbuy recyclable waste from the ragpickers.Most are migrants and their incomeis Rs 2,000-Rs 6,000 a month. Privatizationwould mean they would be barredfrom entering the bins and the dumpyard. Municipal commissioner AseemGupta said the ragpickers can be divertedto other sectors through requisitetraining. "It isn't good that they earn aliving by picking up refuse."
But the ragpickers demand theirshare in the garbage business. SavitaMarware who set up her own garbagedealing business after working as a ragpickerfor 10 years said: "Garbage ismost profitable today. Why should webe pushed out of it?"
A US-based non-profit CommunityHousing and Finance Internationalrecently helped 500 ragpickers get workat the city dump yard. But their jobsmay not last long as the companies planto use machines for all the tasks, fromrecycling to treatment.