Trash and carry: This kind of treasure hunt is not really fun for children

The number of young scavengers in Sukkur has grown steadily over the years.

KARACHI:

For some poor children in Sukkur, the phrase ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’ is more than just an idiom.

Among the hundreds of boys who plough through heaps of garbage armed with polythene bags are friends Arbaz and Nadir. For them, amassing a piece of cardboard, plastic or metal which can be cashed for their next meal is quite a windfall.

Nadir says his father is an addict and unemployed - he bums around and incessantly refuses to work, coercing his family to finance his habits. “When my father first asked my mother to start working so that he could get his fix, she flatly refused. She got quite a thrashing for that and eventually gave in,” said the 10-year-old boy.

But the family hadn’t hit rock-bottom just yet - the boy’s elder sister, who had been married to an older man, returned to her parent’s home when her husband forced her to become a sex worker. “She isn’t allowed to work as a maid. My mother is afraid she will be abused. So I had to step out of the house and do my bit to support my family, even though I’m the youngest of my six siblings.”

Nadir’s day begins at 9 am - around the same time luckier children are poring over a colourful textbook or solving simple sums. He keeps his eyes open for pieces of cardboard, plastic and metal as well as discarded shoes. Scrap dealers purchase cardboard at the rate of Rs25 per kilogramme (kg), plastic for Rs20 per kg, old shoes for Rs20 for a kg and iron for Rs30 per kg.



Nadir says he earns a paltry sum even though he bears the stench of garbage and the searing sunlight for hours. “I earn between Rs100 and Rs150 per day. Selling our hard work at right price is a tough task,” he said. “Many scrap dealers take advantage of us and pay very little for what we collect. To get a fair price, I had to keep changing my dealer.”

His friend Arbaz is just seven years old but his tiny weathered hands show that he has toiled harder than other children of his age. “My father is a poor labourer. He can neither provide me and my siblings a good standard of living nor can he send us to school,” he said. “When he is out for work, I start scavenging through garbage and find enough to earn between Rs50 and Rs100 a day,” said the boy. Sometimes Arbaz’s nine-year-old sister helps him sift through the garbage. “But my mother usually stops her. She doesn’t like the idea of girls having to navigate their way through piles of filth.”

Junk dealer Khadim Hussain, who has been in the business for the last 15 years, said that when he started out, the majority of scavengers were drug addicts. But the demographics of those who plunge into mounds of garbage with hopes to find something valuable have shifted over the years. “With rising inflation and poverty, a large number of little boys were forced to join the business.”

Hussain said that more than 200 people visit his shop daily to sell an assortment of scrap. A major chunk of that figure comprises children. When asked about how much he earns, Hussain said, “We don’t earn much because we sell this junk to the big dealers. A huge space is required to store a large amount of junk and make more profit. But we just don’t have that much space in our tiny shops.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 20^th, 2013.