Working in the Wasteland

By Sandeep and Shravya Jain

Bangalore, May 6: Jayamma is a contract pourakarmika, who reports every morning at 6:30 to her mestri (supervisor) for her the day’s chores. She spends the next eight hours collecting filthy garbage –rotten food, discarded meat and the animal excreta from the city’s streets. “The sight and the smell are so unbearable that I feel like vomiting sometimes,” she says.

The Pourakarmikas are forced to work without any safety equipment Picture by: Shravya Jain

For 15 years, Jayamma (40) has been working in Chandra Layout, one of the biggest residential areas in the city. According to papers signed by the city corporation and the contractor she works for, Jayamma is supposed to get a protective mask, gumboots and gloves. But she has never received any of the items from her contractor. Asking for them would only bring chiding and harassment, she said.

So, Jayamma and her most of the other 10,700 pourakarmikas working in the city collect the garbage with their bare hands, many of them walking in piles of rotting rubbish without shoes.

There are 32 contractors under the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP)’s sold waste management department, who divide the work into areas made up of health wards. Contractors hire pourakarmikas, who then do the dirty work of clearing the city’s 3,000 tons of garbage a day.

According to the contract copy signed between the BBMP and contractors in 2007, which was received through a Right to Information Act request, the contractors are supposed to provide safety uniforms and other amenities to the workers as part of their employment contract. But most of them are not, interviews with the workers revealed.

“They are supposed to provide masks, uniforms, gumboots, soap, gloves, canteen facilities and so much more. But they cheat the workers out of all this,” said S. Balan, a senior lawyer in the Karnataka High Court and president of Bangalore District of All India Trade Union Council (AITUC).