The ragpickers are victims of exploitation and their lives are miserable.
New Delhi: There is a large slum near the Ghazipur landfill, where many Bengali-speaking underprivileged people have taken up the profession of “rag picking”. These people haven’t visited their hometown in years and have made Delhi their permanent residence. Buni Bibi, whose parents left Malda in search of a better life in Delhi, arrived 14 years ago, and today she and her two children are living in the slums. Suraj has been hired to collect plastics, steel, and other items from the landfill by her husband, who used to be a rag picker.
To acquire a deeper understanding of the ragpickers’ plight in Delhi, The Sunday Guardian went to the slums surrounding Ghazipur landfill, where the correspondent discovered that the ragpickers had been victims of exploitation, and the situation has not changed since then. The house of Buni Bibi is made up of bricks, and at one corner of the entrance (without doors), there was a pile of 2-3 sacks filled with plastic and steel (pins, screws, knives, and so forth) items. Buni was quite unwell and was sleeping on a small cot. Her surgery, which cost her roughly Rs 2-3 lakh, was recently completed. She had food poisoning, which is a common phenomenon. Her son’s friend was sitting beside her, comforting her, and the boy with another sack of plastic had just entered her room. While speaking to this correspondent, Suraj said, “I am having a better life now as I stay with them and get meals without spending a penny.” Since it was late afternoon, he hurried away to gather some more collectable waste.
When this correspondent visited the interior of the slum, another Bengali migrant, a rag picker, said, “We used to live in Howrah. My parents relocated here, and I was too young to recall the journey. Now that I’m 25, I’m happily married and have two children. All I knew was that my parents couldn’t find work, so they moved here and started rag picking, and now I’m doing the same.”
There have been several ways of exploitation. For instance, many ragpickers pay Rs 10-Rs 20 to the watchmen per shift. Similarly, another rag picker said, “We, sometimes, pay the chowkidaars (watchmen), who keep strict vigilance on us. They won’t let us work if we don’t pay him. As a result, most of us, particularly men, go there late at night when there are no chowkidaars there. We carry torches, but there is always the risk of being pricked by some small nails or anything.”
Similarly, whenever any higher authorities visit the site, the ragpickers are asked to stop their work for an hour or so. Another rag picker told this paper, “Some higher official came, we stopped our work. It was more than one hour, so I returned to resume my household work.”
Officials at the Ghazipur landfill have clearly stated that the ragpickers have no safety measures. An official told this paper, “A majority of them are infected with a wide range of ailments such as diarrhoea, dysentery, and dengue fever. We are instructed to stay quiet, even if we wish to raise our voices. Also, we do face breathing issues. My colleague, who had been working here for several years, left his job as he had developed some serious breathing problems. I am also planning to switch my job.”
Another rag picker, Neeraj, was roaming around on a highway. His eyes were a little red, sought drunk, and he was wearing shredded clothes, looking around, collecting some plastic bottles. While speaking to The Sunday Guardian, he said, “I collect all sorts of bottles and earn Rs 40-Rs 50 in the winter season, but in the summer I earn Rs 200-Rs 250 per day. I sell these to nearby shops (he wasn’t able to recall the name).”