One day in the life of an Indian child scavenger

GAUHATI, India (AP) – After finishing school, 10-year-old Imradul Ali runs home to change his uniform so he can start his work as a scavenger in the far northeast of India.

Armed with an artillery bag, he goes to a landfill in the slums of Gauhati, the state capital of Assam. Here, he hunts among piles of other people’s trash, looking for plastic bottles, glass, or anything he can recycle or sell. Around it, cows graze in the mountains of debris that roam the site.

Ali comes from a family of scavengers, or “cloth pickers”; his father, mother, and older brother earn all their income. He started doing it more than a year ago to help his family make more money.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit the family hard last year as it could not go to the landfill and search the garbage to sell things. They fought during the closing months of India, but were able to get food thanks to the help of aid organizations.

Ali says he doesn’t want to spend his life doing this, but he doesn’t know what the future holds for him. “I want to keep going to school and I would like to be a rich man,” he said.

He earns up to 100 rupees ($ 1.30) a day, while the rest of his family makes about 250 rupees ($ 3.30) each.

“It’s very difficult to run a family by cheating,” Ali’s mother, Anuwara Begum, said.

The cart is a dirty and dangerous job. While there is no exact count, aid groups say around 4 million people in India work as scavengers. It is indeed the country’s primary recycling system, but the work is not environmentally friendly. Those who do have few rights and are exposed to deadly poisons every day.

India’s latest census in 2011 put the total number of child workers aged 5 to 14, including scavengers, at around 10 million.

Thadeus Kujur, who heads the Snehalaya charity group, says it’s always sad to see kids picking up leftovers instead of going to school. Her group runs five daycare institutions, which care for 185 boys and girls, and has helped 20,000 children for seven years. “We run motivational programs so that poor parents realize the value of education before they put their children in schools,” he said.

According to a new analysis by the World Bank Group and the United Nations Children’s Fund, it is estimated that one in six children, or 356 million worldwide, lived in extreme poverty before the pandemic began. and the number is expected to worsen significantly.

Ali’s father wants his son to keep going to school, hoping he will run his own store or get a coveted government job when he grows up, ending his suffering.

As for Ali, he wants to drive a car and wants to have one in the future. “I want good food and clothes,” he said.