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Now, getting even half that is difficult. Sahra Bano, 37, who lives near the Bhalswa landfill and sells what she can scavenge, says she used to earn about 400 rupees ($5) per day. cents, half of what it brought before the pandemic. In New Delhi, a pound of plastic bottles sells for the equivalent of 11 U.S. In many countries, closed borders brought recycling markets to a halt, lowering demand for reused materials that the workers collect.
VACCINE SCAVENGERS FREE
At private hospitals, each shot is sold for 250 rupees ($3.45), but they are free at government hospitals.īecause the pandemic sent the price of oil crashing, it became cheaper to make new plastic than to recycle it.
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India said it will give vaccines to everyone over 45 starting April 1. “The vaccine is just another, and very dramatic, example of an exclusion that has prevailed before COVID-19 came on the horizon,” said Jeffrey, who co-authored a book on waste in India in 2018. That many of these workers in India belong to poor Muslim or Dalit communities, who once were known as “untouchables” at the bottom of the country's caste system, adds a layer of prejudice. They often are already poor, moving to unfamiliar cities to eke out a living by sorting garbage, says Robin Jeffrey, a professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. The work is dangerous, and injuries are common, so governments have an incentive to not recognize them or provide benefits like health care, she said. In Mexico, scavengers help municipal workers on garbage trucks and often collect trash from neighborhoods not served by authorities. There is no doubt that these people provide an essential service, says Louise Guibrunet, a researcher at National Autonomous University of Mexico who has studied the issue. At the Dandora landfill in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi, some of the scavengers who are not eligible for a shot wear medical gear discarded by hospitals and health clinics, saying it especially protects them from the weather during the rainy season. Sanitation workers employed by local governments in South Africa and Zimbabwe are likely to be in line for the COVID-19 vaccine after health workers, unlike those who sort through the trash. Still, they are they not considered “essential workers” and thus are ineligible for vaccinations.īegum has started an online petition pleading for vaccines and asking, “Are we not human?” Chintan estimates that each year, those like her save the local government over $50 million and eliminate over 900,000 tons of carbon dioxide by diverting waste away from landfills. Manuwara Begum, 46, lives in a cardboard hut behind a five-star hotel in the heart of New Delhi and feels the inequity keenly. “If they are not vaccinated, then the cities will suffer,” Mukherjee said.
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Few have their own protective gear or even clean water to wash their hands, said Chitra Mukherjee of Chintan, a nonprofit environmental research group in New Delhi.
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The pandemic has amplified the risks that these informal workers face.