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.