A walk of around 2 km from the Padmavathi ghat opposite the Pandit Nehru Bus Station leads to the sandy bed of River Krishna where 50-odd ramshackle tents shelter as many families of a workers’ brigade. They represent the ultimate symbol of poverty and degradation and yet remain ‘invisible’ to the government initiatives.
The waste-pickers, around 500 in city according to official estimates, are informal workers struggling to make ends meet. Devoid of basic amenities, they live in inhuman conditions and are shunned everywhere as lowly and even as outcasts.
“We were asked to shift farther from the ghat to pave way for the food courts coming up there. Who would like our ugly sight in the midst of such riverfront beauty,” says an emaciated Sandhya Rani, a resident of the makeshift colony.
In the name of basic amenities, the municipal authorities have sunk a borewell to cater to their water needs after several appeals made by members of the Dalit Bahujan Resource Centre (DBRC), working for uplift of the Dalit sections since 1997. There is no toilet facility.
Living on hard times
Most of them are malnourished and yet work for long hours in heat, rain and humidity. Their handling of waste brings them repeatedly into contact with human and animal excreta. They hover around damp, dusty and crowded sites dotted with pigs, goats, cattle and dogs, magnifying the conditions for transmission of diseases.
Our interaction is interrupted by a slight commotion by members surrounding Dasari Lakshmi, who suffered a bout of epilepsy.
“Most of them are susceptible to skin ailments and lung disorders as they are constantly exposed to hazardous conditions,” says Alladi Deva Kumar, executive secretary, DBRC.
While most of them leave home and hit the streets in the wee hours to rummage through heaps of discard to pick used milk packets, plastic and glass, papers and lids of glass bottles, which are sold to small-time scrap dealers for a meagre ₹100-150, their day’s income.
No schooling
The children, ragged, dirty and unkempt, do not have access to school. Karna, a six-year-old from another colony near Ranigarithota, was sent to the nearest municipal elementary school after intervention by a DBRC volunteer.
However, the boy dropped out after he was bullied and heckled by other children for not being ‘clean enough’.
“It is a vicious circle. They are migrant workers and do not have Aadhaar or caste certificates. We are trying to get them so they can be covered under State welfare programmes,” says S. Anil Kumar, project director of DBRC’s Green Workers’ Project, an initiative to provide waste-pickers a life of dignity.
Municipal Commissioner J. Nivas said a special proposal to the Tribal Welfare Department was approved and 80 of their families would get houses in the Ajitsingh Nagar area.
“In December last year, 150 of them were given I-D cards and they were linked to the sanitary wing of the Corporation. All their needs will be taken care of very soon,” he said.
