The work here never gets over

NEW DELHI, December 6: Nine in the morning and not a single truck in sight. The car went from one garbage dump to another. They were all ...

NEW DELHI, December 6: Nine in the morning and not a single truck in sight. The car went from one garbage dump to another. They were all as foul smelling and overflowing as the previous day. Thanks to the usual practice of cleaning up once in five days in Partpanganj, the dump, residents said, had been untouched for the past three days.

As no trucks seemed to be coming to the overflowing dalaos as the dumps are called it seemed wiser to move to one of the four garbage dumping grounds 8212; the land-fill site at Gazipur 8212; to get hold of a truck. And there it was, the first truck that morning, DL-IG B-3405. It was full and emitted odious vapours as it raced to its destination. The car entered the vast wasteland with B-3405. Many trucks had been at work. A roller, one of the six on the endless acres of waste at Gajipur8217;s land-fill site, immediately set about levelling the heap that the truck unloaded with the other heaps left by other trucks.

Shabbir Ahmed, the junior engineer, sat amidst the stench in a tiny office and said that the entire area will one day be a garden, in spite of the fact that there was no system to separate organic wastes from non-biodegradable matter.

The truck, B-3405, now moved towards Defence Enclave, ignored a dump in Sukh Vihar and entered an open dump in Jitar Nagar. A yellow vehicle was waiting and it immediately started trapping garbage in its holder and emptying it into B-3405. It was a loader, one of the 138 the city has. And B-3405 was one of the five or six trucks allotted to every loader.

B-3405 left for Gajipur soon and was back again. After three trips to and fro it was noon. It was time to leave for lunch and the loader was leaving too. So were Hasan and Hamidul, the city8217;s unpaid scavengers, with their carts full off sacks of bottles, paper and polythene, after a long morning8217;s work that began at 8.

8220;We will sell this in the evening to a shop and they will then treat the plastics and recycle them,8221; says Hamid.

After 2 p.m. the loader is back and three more trucks have joined B-3405. Gurmeet, Ramesh, Sukhdev join Rame of B-3405 who was handling the huge dump single-handedly in the morning. 8220;The work here never gets over,8221; says Gurmeet. 8220;By morning it would be full again8221;.

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8220;All kinds of things reach here. All the filth from the scores and scores of clinics in the area, the houses, the shops. And most of the garbage is brought by little carts pulled manually or by bullocks,8221; he says. In the latter case both the man as well as the bullock get paid separately by the MCD, they say.

Their trucks filled they have tea while little Hilal, Firoz and Maharaj, who have been picking at the heaps, leave with sacks of cans and plastics for their hutments in Chandernagar. They say they will give the sacks to their parents who will then buy food with the money they get. Devi and Sunita, around seven years old, also make for their home near Radhu Palace with sacks of wooden sticks. 8220;We will use this as fuel,8221; says Devi, and they beg for jobs. Rame leaves and will not return now as the Jitar Nagar dump is clean. But many dumps on the way remain uncleared.