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THE waste pickers of Latur, Maharashtra, have not only managed to change their lives for the better, but have also been instrumental in the town winning the prestigious Sant Gadge Baba Maharaj Award. The award recognises good sanitation practices in the state—with a huge prize money. "Earlier we used to earn around Rs 1,800 to Rs 2,000 per month. We mostly lived off leftovers found in the garbage dumps and our children worked as rag/waste pickers. Things are different now. We manage to earn around Rs 3,000 per month and have savings as well. Our children go to school and we can dream of a better life for them. We don't want our children to do this work," says middle-aged Lata Bai, who has been a waste picker for the past 10 years. Lata Bai is one of the 183 waste pickers whose lives have been transformed. When Latur's garbage collection system was all set to be privatised, the waste pickers decided to form an association. As a result, instead of being rendered jobless, they were formalised into a group. It was, in fact, the Chikunguniya epidemic, which had hit the city, that compelled the local administration to do something about the dismal garbage disposal system. "Latur was one of the biggest breeding grounds of Chikunguniya. So, we had to do something. After a survey of Tirupati (a prominent pilgrimage centre in Tamil Nadu), which gets around 700,000 visitors everyday but still remains garbage-free, we decided to implement a door-to-door collection of garbage in the entire city of Latur. We also decided not to spend any money on garbage collection. The households would pay the monthly Rs 20 towards the collection of garbage," explains Deepak Kasar, the then Municipal Commissioner, Latur. The project is the brainchild of the local administration and ACDI/ VOCA, a US-based voluntary non-profit organisation under the Growth-Oriented Micro-Enterprise Development Project (GMED) of USAID. It is a fine example of public-private partnership. Of the 183 who have been employed, around 75 per cent are women. Rather than a monthly salary, the women are paid per tonne of garbage collected. As an added incentive, they can sell the recycled material of the garbage in the market. The new efficient waste management programme has been rolled out with the help of Vasundhara Paryavaran Bahundshayia Sanstha (VPBS), a local NGO which won the contract to provide daily garbage collection services to over 90 per cent of the town. The VPBS carries out door-to-door collection as well secondary collection from the roads. While the transport and equipment like the ghantagaddi (a cart for door-to-door collection) is provided by the VPBS, Janadhar Sewa Bhavi Sanstha, another NGO that works with rag pickers, has done the difficult job of organising the rag pickers and training them in door-to-door garbage collection. — WFS
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