Several residents these days wake up to the Swachhta song played on loudspeaker of the vans that pick up garbage every morning in our sector. Besides collecting garbage they spread awareness of the Swachh Bharat Mission.
However, quite a lot of times, Garbage collectors are treated like trash by few residents. They are most unpaid and undervalued workers. A candid chat with a group of pickers offered a peek into their daily lives. They have multiple tasks to accomplish throughout the day. Starting early at 5 with empty stomachs, each of them gets involved in either riding the truck or in loading and unloading of the waste. This is not a pleasant job to do .Moreover, the lack of amenities provided to them exponentially increase their difficulty levels. Quite often they have to sort out the wet stinking mess barehanded, without gloves. This mess consists of sharp objects, broken glasses, used sanitary napkins, rusty metals that could cause severe injuries and infection.
Few days before a garbage collector was badly injured while segregating the garbage and was hospitalized for few days. Despite all this, the collectors face continuous harassments by few critical residents who constantly have a flood of complaints against them.
“Though I don’t love my job but I have to do it for my living. Even after repeated requests, many people fail to follow segregation rules and humiliate us in many ways”, says a garbage collector.
We must realize that waste management has become a global concern and it takes lot to do this essential job. The least we could do is to treat cleanliness workers with dignity, respect and empathy.
Compliance with segregation rules will make their job easier and boost their work efficiency.
REMEMBER- If we generate the waste, we need to be responsible for its segregation too
by Shalini (9818310289)
