Rawa Kucing dump a home to 400 families
Rawa Kucing dump a home to 400 families
Multa Fidrus
The Jakarta Post/Tangerang
They have learned not to be bothered by the stench and the toxic
seepage produced by the piles of garbage.
The sound of the first garbage trucks of the day arriving is
the morning call for 400 families of scavengers living inside and
nearby the Rawa Kucing dump in Kedaung Wetan subdistrict,
Neglasari district, Tangerang municipality.
Hundreds of scavengers, who have been waiting for the first
truck to dump its load of trash in the six-hectare dump, which is
located near Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, scramble to
get their hands on the best pickings.
When their work gathering recyclables is finished around
midday, the next job is to select, clean and dry the
plastic bags, bottles and cups, and to haggle over prices with
the buyers who visit the dump every day.
"We sell this to the buyers here at Rp 1,300 per kilogram. If
we want a higher price, we have to take it to other buyers away
from the dump," Ansoni, 34, one of the scavengers told The
Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Ansoni, who hails from Cirebon, West Java, said he could earn
between Rp 50,000 and Rp 100,000 per week, which he said was
enough to feed his family.
To make as much money as possible, every member of the family
normally has to lend a hand.
Darman, 45, a resident of Kedaung Wetan, brings his wife and
their two teenage daughters to collect garbage at the dump every
day.
"I don't mind. It is better that my daughters and I help Bapak
collect recyclables here instead of doing nothing at home. It's
not too bad. The money keeps our family alive," says Darman's
wife, Nurhani.
Meanwhile, Saiful, one of the garbage buyers, said that after
buying the trash from scalpers, he directly sells it to factories
that produce various kinds of plastic appliances for household
use.
"We sell the trash after we have collected 500 kilograms. The
factories pay Rp 1,500 per kilogram and we can get Rp 200 profit
from each kilogram," he explained.
Driving a pickup truck equipped with weighing scales, Saiful
and the other buyers erect plastic huts in the dump where they
stay until the afternoon every day.
Subur, an officer with the municipal sanitation agency, which
runs the dump, said that 70 percent of the scavengers were local
people, while the rest came from other places, some even from as
far away as Cirebon.
He said that at least 3,000 cubic meters of garbage
collected by 100 garbage trucks every day from homes and markets
across the municipality were disposed off at the dump, which
opened in 1990.
He also supervises a group of workers employed by the
sanitation agency to operate 15 fermentation tanks and a
rototiller modified to shred trash so that it can be turned into
organic fertilizer.
Subur said that Tangerang's 1.4 million people produce 3,290
cubic meters of household garbage per day, but only 3,080 cubic
meters can be transported to the Rawa Kucing dump.
"The problem now is that we need more garbage trucks, more
tanks for the fermentation process and more machines to destroy
the trash," he explained.
Although the scavengers could also collect organic trash that
can be transformed into organic fertilizer, most of them are
loath to touch the putrifying garbage.
"We also prefer plastic garbage as we can sell it for more
money than the organic trash," Ansoni said.