French group rescues Cambodian child scavengers from garbage dump
French group rescues Cambodian child scavengers from garbage dump
AP Photos NY180-183[ By VIJAY JOSHI= Associated Press Writer=
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -
French group rescues Cambodian child scavengers from garbage dump
Vijay Joshi
Associated Press
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Dressed in a starched white smock, Hen Horn flicked a saucepan of
frying vegetables and breathed in the smoky aroma in the spotless
kitchen of the Lotus Blanc restaurant.
Two years ago, Hen Horn was wading in garbage.
Caked in grime from head to foot, inhaling the rancid stench of
filth, he earned a living by scavenging in Cambodia's biggest
garbage dump for 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week.
"It would be unbearably hot in the summer. But it was worse
when it rained because there would be worms everywhere," said Hen
Horn, 18.
His life took a U-turn when he was rescued by a French
volunteer group in 2001 from his foul existence at the Stung Mean
Chey rubbish dump on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
Like Hen Horn, about 3,600 scavenger children have been saved
from the dump since 1996 by the group "For the Smile of a Child"
and provided with schooling, vocational training, health care
and, most importantly, a future.
"In my own small world, I am the happiest man now," said Hen
Horn, who is learning to be a chef at the Lotus Blanc, run by For
the Smile of a Child. The haute cuisine restaurant, favored by
Western expatriates in Phnom Penh, also serves as a vocational
training school for the group's wards.
But for every lucky one like Hen Horn, hundreds more are still
trapped in the dump.
Most earn about 11,000 riel (US$3) a day, often to help their
parents pay off loans taken to feed the family in times of
drought or floods.
The site presents the raw face of poverty in Cambodia, one-
third of whose 12 million people do not earn enough to eat two
meals a day.
The dump extends across an area of about 10 soccer fields,
skylined by 20-feet-high (6-meter-high) hills of refuse that
thicken the air with a nauseating stink of decay. The slippery
ground is covered with a carpet of flies that rise up in black,
buzzing clouds on being disturbed.
Hundreds of adults and children traverse the rotting waste,
wearing torn galoshes, uncovering rubbish with steel hooks.
Anything that can be recycled is picked up with bare hands and
tossed into sacks for sale to middlemen -- plastic shopping bags,
drink cans, food tins, hypodermic syringes and even food
leftovers sold as pig feed.
Every time a dump truck unloads its unsavory cargo - 400 tons
(441 U.S. tons) in all every day - children and adults rush to
pick through before it is pushed by bulldozers into a pit where
it is burned.
Scrambling for scrap can be dangerous with trucks backing up
and bulldozers moving in. At least four people have been crushed
to death this year.
Hen Horn, the trainee chef, said his most vivid memory of the
dump is "the pushing and shoving and everybody rushing to get
whatever we could lay our hands on."
"I promised myself I would never go back to the dump. I would
tell my mother 'don't give up hope. I will find a way out,"' said
Hen Horn.
Founded by a French couple in 1993, For the Smile of a Child -
"Pour un Sourire d'Enfant" in French - employs 120 Cambodians,
half of them teachers.
The group's work is only a small contribution in the fight on
Cambodia's pervasive poverty, which has led to one of the world's
highest rates of child labor.
About half the country's four million children aged five to 17
are employed, mostly in farms and fields, according to government
statistics. Others work in shops and factories, according to the
government's latest Cambodia Child Labor Survey in 2001.
No figures are available on how many children work in
hazardous places such as chemical factories or garbage dumps like
Stung Mean Chey.
Cheoun Simorn, an undernourished 16-year-old girl who looks
12, has been scavenging there with her younger brother for the
last year, starting at 6 a.m. and finishing with fading light at
6 p.m., earning about 15,000 riel (US$4) a day.
They are helping their father, a cycle rickshaw driver, pay
off his debts. It's unlikely he will ever do so - Chheoun Simorn
says he must pay 13,000 riel (US$3) every day, just in interest.
She breaks into sobs when asked why she works at the dump.
"This is not a job I can talk about. I dare not tell my mother I
don't want to work here," she said as she wiped away the tears,
leaving a streak of black from her grimy hand on her cheek.
About two kilometers (one mile) from the dump is the
headquarters of For the Smile of a Child -- a stark contrast of
well manicured lawns, neat classrooms, white-tiled bathrooms and
dining halls.
Children who have worked at the dump at least one year are
chosen for the program, said Pin Sarapich, director of vocational
training center for the group.
Parents have to be persuaded to let their children go to
school and, in return, they are given 17 kilograms (37 pounds) of
rice per week, a donation from the United Nations' World Food
Program, to compensate for the loss of the children's income.
At school, the children eat two meals and two snacks a day.
They get free education up to 12th grade and vocational training
in the hotel business, beauty care, handicrafts or secretarial
work.
But with a budget of US$1.07 million last year - mostly from
private French donations - the group cannot take any more
children than the 300 to 400 it helps per year.
Pin Sarapich hopes that the former scavengers will inspire
others to try to escape from the garbage dump.
"The kids we help here will go on to help others by passing on
their optimism, and the message that one should never give up,"
said Pin.
On the Net:
World Food Program: www.wfp.org
Pour un Sourire d'Enfant www.pse.asso.fr (French language)
GetAP 1.00 -- DEC 31, 2003 07:13:29