COLOMBO, SRI LANKA – Kandegedara Arachchige Lionel, 43, has been working for more than 11 years in Kotikawatta-Mulleriyawa, a village council in Sri Lanka’s Colombo district. He is a health laborer, otherwise known as someone who collects garbage.
He says he does the job so that he can afford to educate his daughters, since he studied up to only grade five in school.
“I want to give good education for my three daughters of 13, 7 and 2,” he says.
But he says his family is embarrassed by his job as a trash collector.
“My wife did not like this job,” he says. “In first few months, even she did not talk to me. Every night, she cried a lot. At that time, we had only my eldest daughter. Several times she got angry with me, and she wanted to leave me.”
But he says he persuaded her that it was a good job to support their family.
“I tried my best to make her understood,” he says. “Now she is OK.”
Still, his job continues to mortify his oldest daughter, whose school is situated in the same village council area where he collects trash. He says that when he rides by on his garbage tractor, he tries to hide from his daughter’s friends and teachers to preserve his family’s dignity.
“But my two little kids who go to school not complaining me about my job,” he says. “They are still very young. I cannot think about what will happen in future.”
Despite his family’s disapproval, he says he is grateful to have a permanent job, which means he will have a job until he retires around age 55 to 60, at which point he will receive a pension. As a government employee, he is currently entitled to a system of monthly wages, and he says he’s happy with his pay.
“I get 12,690 rupees [LKR ($115 USD)] as my basic salary and another 5,750 rupees [LKR ($50 USD)] and 634 rupees [LKR ($6 USD)] as allowances,” he says. “Except that, the permanent health laborers are entitled to be worked additional 100 hours as overtime. I [am satisfied] with my salary.”
In addition to being able to afford his daughters’ education, he says he has been able to buy a three-wheeler, a hybrid of a car and a scooter. One of his relatives pays him to borrow it, so he earns extra money this way. Thanks to his job, he is also building his family a house, which he says has earned him respect.
“Three years before, with a support of a bank loan, I started to build a permanent house, and within another few months’ time, it can be completed,” he says. “I earned everything because of this job. Whoever underestimate this job, I have a respect on this.”
Although Sri Lanka has a well-organized garbage system run by local authorities, many citizens don’t follow the regulations and dump their garbage on the streets instead. Garbage collectors say residents also look down on them for their profession. Government officials say they are doing what they can to change residents’ attitudes toward the garbage system and garbage collectors in order to keep Sri Lanka clean and harmonious.
About 2,900 tons of garbage is collected every day in Sri Lanka, according to the Central Environmental Authority. Around 60 percent of this trash is collected in the Western province, and around 43 percent is collected in Colombo district, which is located in the Western province.
The Sri Lankan government has various national and local laws to regulate waste management. The National Environmental Act, Provincial Councils Act, local government ordinances and hazardous waste regulations are the main legislative tools that govern waste disposal.
Solid waste management falls on local authorities in Sri Lanka, which has 330 local governmental bodies, comprising municipal councils, urban councils and village councils. But aside from these local authorities, there is little care among residents when it comes to proper management of solid waste. In some localities, compost and biogas – a gaseous fuel converted from organic waste, such as dead plant and animal material – are produced, but in most of them, residents dump solid waste in a haphazard manner, creating several negative environmental consequences.
Residents of Sri Lanka’s urban areas don’t have enough space to store garbage in their homes. On streets where authorities collect garbage regularly, residents can store the garbage in containers outside their homes. Otherwise, they must deposit their garbage in the local dump.
Latha Manamperi, 58, is a housewife whose house is situated close to a roadside garbage dump. Manamperi says that although the dump is easily accessible, most people don’t dispose of their garbage bags properly into the dump.
She says that when they travel by in their cars, motorbikes and bicycles, they toss the garbage bags onto the road without even stopping the vehicles to put them into the dump. Most of the garbage bags get damaged when they are thrown, and solid waste comes out of the bags. The garbage is visible to passersby and draws dogs, cats and crows, which try to procure food from the damaged bags.
If health laborers don’t clean the dump daily, she says it begins to smell. In the rainy season, the situation becomes worse.
“Personally, I think if the residents of this road change their attitudes, we can keep this place clean without a problem for anyone,” she says.
Nimal Abesekara, 39, a casual health laborer in Kotikawatta-Mulleriyawa village council, says his job would be easier if residents followed the garbage rules.
“Most difficult thing is most of the house owners put all the solid waste into one bag without separating and keep outside their homes,” he says. “Sometimes broken glasses and metals are also included in the bags. When we carry them and load them to the tractors, we face with accidents.”
He says it’s up to residents, not authorities, to fix this.
“Thousand times we have complained these issues to our supervisors, [public health inspectors], secretary of the pradeshiya sabha, but nothing has happened,” he says, using the term for village council here. “The problem is with the householders.”
Abesekara is originally from Kandy, a district in Sri Lanka’s Central province. He has been working in this village council for more than five years as a casual health laborer. Casual laborers work on a contract basis. After working for several years, there is a possibility of becoming a permanent laborer, like Lionel.
Abesekara works every day of the month, earning 400 rupees LKR ($3.60 USD) per day. In this village council, casual health laborers may work only 40 hours of overtime, compared with permanent health laborers, who may work 100 hours of overtime.
“This income is not enough for me to manage my family,” he says. “I have three kids. Wife is not working.”
He leaves his house around 6:30 a.m. to start the one-kilometer trek to work.
“I come to work by walk,” he says.
For breakfast, he has a bun and tea from a nearby tea shop before going to work. He says he eats the same for lunch, as the smell of the garbage ruins workers’ appetites to eat a full meal.
“We do not have rice for lunch,” he says. “No one feel to eat, as the bad smell of the garbage. For lunch, [we go] to one tea shop to have plain tea and buns.”
He says this is also because of the way they smell.
“We cannot go to whatever the shops we like,” he says. “The shop owners do not allow us to come inside. There is a small tea shop owner, Piyadasa, only allow us to come there in between our working hours.”
The village council provides them bathing facilities to have baths after work. Abesekara says this helps him to regain his appetite for dinner.
“[I eat] rice and curry after going back to home in the evening,” he says. “Not only myself, everyone is same.”
But he says it’s a good job.
“We get enough gloves, masks, T-shirts and boots from the authority,” he says. “Every six month[s], the authority forwards us for medical checkups and vaccinations. Other than my job permanency issue, I’m satisfied with this job and try to survive.”
Abesekara works from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. After work, he does part-time jobs, such as cleaning gardens, climbing coconut trees to pluck coconut and collecting firewood, to earn extra money.
Close to the Kotikawatta-Mulleriyawa cemetery is a compost unit that was established in April 2011 with the support of the Solid Waste Management Authority of the Western province and the local village council. Ten casual health laborers work in the compost unit, including two supervising officers.
Shrimathi Niluka, 36, is one of the casual health laborers working in the compost unit. A mother of two children, she lives in a slum about five kilometers away from the compost unit.
“My son is 16 years old, and daughter is 8 years old,” she says. “Son is not schooling. He does not live with us. He stays in my mother’s home. He does not like to live in a slum. Daughter is getting treatment for malnutrition from very early ages. Still, she is schooling, but weight is not sufficient for her age.”
She started the job in March 2011, approximately one month before the official opening of the compost unit. The only woman working in the compost unit, she works from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., earning 400 rupees LKR ($3.60 USD) per day
Niluka says she is the family’s primary breadwinner because her husband, 42, became disabled in an accident two years ago. She works six days per week, excluding Sundays.
“I do not have any problem in this place,” she says. “Basically, I separate the collected solid waste, pack the compost, sift the compost, clean the office premises, etc.”
Before giving the laborers their casual appointments, the village council promised to give them vaccinations to protect them from diseases, health checkups every three months, and boots, gloves and T-shirts. Still, they haven’t got the vaccinations and health checkups, Niluka says.
“Luckily, within these five months I was not getting sick due this job,” she says, smiling. “If I got sick, no one is there to look after my poor daughter and husband.”
She says her one and only ambition is to construct a private latrine for them.
“Because of my girl child, I have to do it immediately,” she says. “We do not have proper latrine facilities in our slum.”
Duminda Wanasinghe, 24, who has studied up to advanced level, the level below university, also works in the compost unit. As one of the supervisors, he oversees the solid waste recycling process from beginning to end.
Before joining the unit, he held several jobs, but he was not satisfied with any of them. He says he started working for this village council with the hope of earning a permanent position.
“I think without a permanent job, it is very difficult to survive in future,” he says. “So I wait here with this very low wage of 400 rupees LKR ($3.60 USD) per day, same as others working here, even without listening to my girlfriend.”
Like Lionel, he says his significant other is ashamed of his job.
“She does not like this position,” he says. “She always blames me, as her friends joke [with] her about garbage. She thinks this not a respectful job. But I cannot leave this because of the permanency. When we were appointed to this compost project, the authority agreed to permanent our positions.”
Wasanthi Wickramarathne, who has been secretary of Kotikawatta-Mulleriyawa village council for three years, says that the local government here has a well-organized garbage collection system. She says that 33 health laborers work every day of every month with 11 tractors to keep the city clean, collecting 28 to 30 tons of garbage per day.
“We have 23 permanent health laborers,” she says. “In addition to that, 10 casual health laborers are also working every day.”
Wickramarathne says there are 34,000 tax-paying households in this village council area. Laborers collect garbage from each household twice a week according to a schedule. They collect garbage from the dumps in the main roads and public markets daily.
“Other than the tractors, we have five handcarts to clean the roadsides and two hand tractors [for] daily city cleaning services,” Wickramarathne says.
In Kotikawatta-Mulleriyawa village council, high population density and a lack of available land have made disposal of solid waste a serious issue. But Wickramarathne says the government has been working on a solution, though it’s still in its nascent stages.
“We have newly established compost unit under this pradeshiya sabha, which use 5 tons of garbage for recycling, and excess of 28 to 30 tons of solid waste is dumped in a place in Meethotamulla nearly four to five kilometers from here,” Wickramarathne says.
The government has also introduced a national color code strategy to organize solid waste in separate containers in public places. But people ignore this system.
“Unfortunately, no one can live in Sri Lanka without seeing the dump of garbage in the roadsides of many urban areas,” Wickramarathne says. “Due to the attitude of people and some organizations, the garbage is seen on the roadsides, on vacant lands or in rivers/streams, etc. Due to these problem[s], local authorities have faced difficulties to keep clean the environment. Still, we are not in a position to handle proper methods to solve this problem.”
She says waste has increased with economic development.
“My personal understanding is the quantity of solid waste has increased with economic development, and the household waste generation varies between low- and high-income communities,” she says.
Wickramarathne proposes raising public awareness about environmental and health problems caused by improper disposal of solid waste in order to change residents’ attitudes. She also recommends introducing household-level organic compost preparation projects and strengthening national legislation to protect the environment.
Wickramarathne says that she also tries her best to protect the rights of health laborers, treat them equally within the office premises, encourage their self-development and protect them from diseases. But she says it’s difficult to change the attitudes of residents toward health laborers. She says the public needs to be made aware that garbage collectors are human beings and shouldn’t be discriminated against.
