Garbagemen distressed by current situation

JAKARTA: Closure of the Bantar Gebang dump site in Bekasi, West Java, has also affected about 5,000 garbage collectors right across the city.

They have become unemployed and face financial hardship since Monday's closure.

On Thursday the city administration was still undecided on where to dump its garbage, totaling 25,000 cubic meters per day. It has yet to identify a new dump site to replace the Bantar Gebang dump.

According to Asep, one of the collectors, all garbage collectors are paid on a daily basis. Therefore they have not earned a cent for the last couple of days because they have done no work.

"Since Tuesday, we have not collected any garbage because we don't know where to unload it," he told The Jakarta Post.

A day before, Asep said, his group had collected garbage from East Jakarta and loaded it onto a truck. However, the truck could not dispose of it because Bantar Gebang was closed down, while a transit dump site in Sunter, North Jakarta, also rejected it.

"We were paid our wage for that day although we failed to dump the garbage," he said thankfully.

Asep's friend, Jiman, asserted that the situation had really affected them, particularly due to the upcoming Idul Fitri holiday. He said that he needed more money to celebrate it.

"Why did the Bekasi administration close the site at this time? And why did the city administration fail to determine a new site quickly?" said Jiman, who comes from East Java.

Currently, about five thousand people work as garbage collectors, serving the city by taking the material to dump sites.

Their livelihood, therefore, depends on the garbage that the city produces daily. Furthermore, residents here cannot survive without them, as otherwise, the city would disappear beneath heaps of garbage.

Some garbage collectors work for the city sanitation agency while others are employed by private companies hired by the agency to deal with the garbage. Most of the workers are young men.

They are paid Rp 7,500 to Rp 10,000 per day. Usually they work from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The office disburses the money after they have finished each day.

Besides the dirt, the collectors must cope with bad smells and bacteria. However, most of them claim they get used to it after doing the job for a few weeks.

Most collectors said that the wage was insufficient, even for a single man. According to Jiman, it could only cover his daily expenditure on food and transportation.

"I think they should pay us more. Nobody wants to do the dirty jobs," he remarked, adding that he had to do it as he had failed to find any other employment.