The Times of India  13.08.2010

KOLKATA: No roadside garbage heaps. No recyclable material. A system to manage solid waste. Sounds a utopian dream? Not really. The urban development ministry has lined up various projects to make this a reality in Kolkata and other metros.

But then, what will happen to ragpicker families that survive on rummaging through garbage and pick up the recyclable stuff.

They will be rehabilitated as part of the Kolkata Solid Waste Management Improvement Project (KSWMIP) funded by the Japan International Corporation Agency (Jica). For the first time in the country, a common solid waste management infrastructure for several municipalities for shared disposal of waste has been created in the name of KSWMIP.

"Once KSWMIP is under way, segregation of waste is enforced and collected wastes are efficiently transported to transfer stations, there would hardly be any rag by the roadside or in the traditional dumps. The immediate consequence will be loss of income of the rag-pickers," a senior official in the urban development department said.

As part of the ambitious project, houses will be built for rag-pickers. The urban development department is currently identifying alternative livelihood for majority of the rag-pickers and education for child rag-pickers who comprise 50 % of the community. The study on 216 Muslim families and 103 Hindu families in the suburbs found that rag-pickers have their own dreams. They, too, are hard workers and earn and support their families. But most of them lose their childhood, and grow up without any exposure to education, and suffer from a sense of exclusion. They hate rag-picking, and would like to do something "dignified".

As per the study's recommendations, the urban development department may deploy mothers in the rag-picker community as cooks or helpers in the Nabadisha schools where mid-day meals are supplied. They would be given welfare and management education based on their culture and customs. The government will also develop micro-crediting through self-help groups among the mothers and the youth. Children will be sent to municipal schools and their attendance monitored regularly. The urban development department has identified several skill development and entrepreneur schemes under the union ministry of health affairs and state youth services department; rag-pickers can be absorbed in these schemes.

Also, in collaboration with the municipal health system, awareness programmes will be initiated for rag-pickers on adolescent health, personal hygiene, HIV/AIDS and on de-addicting rag-pickers. On the cards is a health-cum insurance scheme for rag-pickers.

"The biggest challenge is to bring the rag-pickers out of the clutches of the middle-men or solid waste vendors the immediate controllers of the rag-picking clan," said a senior official of the urban development department.

The study on rag-pickers have been mostly in the districts as KSWMIP is being implemented in six municipalities of Hooghly Uttarpara, Kotrung, Konnagar, Rishra, Serampore, Baidyabati and Champdani. The pilot project on rehabilitating rag-pickers will later be introduced in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) area.