This nameless child is nothing but the face of millions of children working as ragpickers. They labour from the tender age of 2 or 3 and remain in the trade for as long as they can breath on the land.
Each day these children arise at dawn and start their daily routine. They carry heavy gunny bags to collect rubbish, while children their age carry bags of books to school. At the other end of the roadside they can see many children traveling a few kilometers to reach school by bus or train, while they mostly walk barefoot over 20 kilometers a day. These children are clothed with uniforms made of cloth, which is filthy, tattered, ill fitting, and wholly inadequate for protection especially, when the weather is wet and cold.
They compete with stray animals and cattle for recyclable garbage like paper, plastic, bottles, bones, metals and rotting discarded food thrown out by households and railway passengers. They collect and sort out this garbage with their bare hands and fill their bags. If they are able to make good earnings of the trash they rush to the nearest roadside eatery just to fill their little tummies. On the other hand if the earnings don’t amount to much then they resort to other means of earning, which is mostly stealing.
So who buys the trash from them? The answer is regular scrap dealers who give a tiny fee for the loot the children collect. This fee is a meager payment and most of the times these kids go hungry for days. Life is of little value for them and they get into bad habits that seem to give them momentary bliss. Alcohol, drugs and other hallucinogens become their trusted friends. They also frequently get into fights and face dangers that threaten their life daily. Fatal Diseases are never far away. The nights pose as an even greater peril for them as they are physically, mentally and even sexually abused.
In society these children are tagged as antisocial elements, an embarrassment to the community, and unfit to live. Society doesn’t understand that these children have this lifestyle forced onto them. They lack the basic needs that most of us enjoy, as they come from violent and broken homes where there is parental drunkenness, beatings, starvation and deprivation of security and love. Most of them are orphans fighting a daily battle to survive.
In a nutshell most children who are ragpickers are:
· Abused and exploited
· Deprived: lacking job, money, food and shelter, they are forced into begging, thieving, drug peddling, pimping, and prostitution
· Regarded as juvenile delinquents and antisocial elements, they are often falsely accused of crimes and sent to secure homes of correction, or worse, put into adult prisons
· Engaged in gambling, a popular pastime on the street
· Denied education
· Cut off from parental influence and guidance.
The main antisocial habits among these children are:
· They are involved with drugs, alcohol, smoking, gambling, and unhealthy sexual habits.
· Since their income is less than their expenses, due to bad habits, they are perpetual debtors to the retail scrap dealers.
· They participate in stealing, street-fighting, and delinquent activities.
· Dirty, they are unwelcome guests at weddings, social gatherings, and shopping zones.
· They are physically vulnerable to health problems and infectious skin diseases.
· They are victimized socially through poverty, illiteracy, and rejection.
· With no facilities available for bathing or laundry, they are forced to live in filth and squalor.(They have no education in Personal Hygiene).
