Anzoor is 17 years old Afghan refugee scavenger living in Peshawar. But he doesn’t believe that he is young. For him he is still a few years old child who will die as an aged man but will never get young. He has a very strong logic to convince you over this strange concept of life. “The poor people never get young. We have to start work at the age of five and to stop at our death. We jump from childhood to old age, enjoying nothing in between. He believes that “a poor man is either a child or an old aged paralyzed man, waiting for death”. For him the period between childhood and elderly life is an empty space. Five years old Naeem is his next generation. He doesn’t know much about life, the only thing he is aware of is that he has to work and that he has no time to play. He will ends up like Anzoor, hopeless, always ill, never young but old and waiting for a disgraceful death.

Scavenging or rag picking is the most hazardous, debasing and worst form of labor. In May 2003, SDPI sent its research teams to the provincial capitals to launch an ILO funded project on scavenging. Age groups ranging from five years old to 18 were interviewed besides interviewing some other concerned people. Convincing these isolated and rejected souls for interview was a big job. They are afraid of everyone and don’t trust anyone out side their professions. They have many reasons to feel like that. During pre-testing of the questioner at Islamabad, a rag picker aged 14, expressing his distrust said that once a team of doctors came and took our blood samples with the pledge of coming back with medicines. They never fulfilled their pledge. “Everyone is selfish, everyone come with their own interests in minds and no one is working for us, we are aware of that”. For them, this is an ugly profession, having no chance of progress in future but they have no other option, as “they have to feed their families”.

They rise at dawn, hanging their dirty bags on shoulders and search for waste till dusk. They have to cover long distances with the weight of waste. Lack of means of transportation is their big problem. They wish to have a bicycle or a cart to carry the waste. Their main hunting places are business centers, residential areas, posh localities, roadside waste dumping places, outskirts of the city and major hospitals. One could find them everywhere in the city, with fear in their eyes and waste in their minds. They have only one hour to rest after lunch and then start the work gain. No time for education, playing and recreation. Even 5 years old children follow this tiring and boring ritual. There is no change in timings in the heat of summer or freezing cold of winter. They have nothing in their life like other children. For them, all other children are privileged one. A female rag picker Nusrat says, “she cries when she saw other girls going to schools”, look at us and look at them” she says to herself. They have only one privilege over other children and that is the “freedom of movement”.

Some children aged 15 and above work at night in summer. They start in the evening and finish at 12 or 12: 30 at night. Markets, areas near hospitals and hotels are their hunting places at night. They visit hotels late at night to collect leftover food for themselves and their families. The children who work at night also work as casual laborers at daytime. Their work at night is, however, very risky as sometime they end up in ‘hawalat’ (police lock up).

Waste buying and selling points or junkyards are playing the most important role in their lives. Junkyards could be found everywhere in Peshawar, even in the posh localities. They purchase every kind of item and then sell them out to others in this business. According to the owners, businessmen from Punjab, mostly from Gujranwala and Lahore, buy most of the waste for recycling. Junkyard is not only a place where scavengers sell waste but also a school, a park and a recreation center for gossip and socializing. That is also the place where they are faced with verbal and sexual abuse but still the only place where they meet and socialize. For them, at least the people around, the owner, the businessmen, the visitors, all belong to their profession, generating group feeling or feeling at home.

Background of Profession
Most of them enter this profession willingly but still there are many who are forced by parents to work. The basic reason for entering this profession is extreme poverty coupled with the lack of resources, education and knowledge of any skill to start a business or enter any other profession. As scavenging don’t need any skill or finances, therefore this remains the only option after begging and prostitution. A very small number among them are attending schools, opened by a local NGO for scavengers and other children in the labor force in Peshawar.

Dumping Places, Variety of Waste and Value
There are many dumping places in and around the city but scavengers commonly collect waste at residential areas, roadsides, markets, and unauthorized dumping points scattered everywhere in and outside Peshawar. The open drainage system in the city area is also a source of all sorts of waste, especially hospital waste. They collect all kind of waste ranging from animals bones to used shopping bags, papers, books, broken glasses, bottles including medicine and chemical, clothes, needles, syringes, used hospital bandages and cotton, operation theater equipments like knives, scissors, cutters, shoes, consumer goods packing, iron, copper, broken crockery, plastic and all other house hold items. But hospital waste is the most precious one as for as value is concerned. Syringes, drip bags and urine bags are sold at a price of Rs. 40 per Kg, used cotton bandages Rs. 10 per Kg. and the rest of other waste at Rs. 4 to 10 per Kg.

Junkyard owners cut 1 to 2 Kgs of weight from all the waste except hospital waste, an incentive for concentrating on collection of hospital waste. It is not an easy task to collect hospital waste within the boundaries of hospitals. Security guards at hospitals don’t let them to enter the hospitals, sometime even if they need treatment. But they still have some other options to get it. They bribe low paid employees at hospitals and buy waste in bulk, a very easy way of getting it without making great efforts and spending tiring long hours to collect. Sometime they even steal waste from hospital wards when they get a chance, a very risky option, as there is always a chance of getting caught red handed and beaten up. Amazingly most of them are aware of the fact that used syringes can cause HIV/AIDS, and cancer. They are afraid of used needles; knives and syringes but they can’t let them to be buried or burnt out, as they don’t want to die empty stomach.

Commonalties
There are many commonalities in their way of life, ethnicity, profession and thinking. Majority of them are ethnically ‘Pashtoon’ Afghan refugees who got brought up in refugee camps. They live in rented mud houses in the outskirts of the city and refugee camps. According to one of the junkyard owner, 500 children come to the city from only one locality called Kacha Gari.

All of them are bachelors. Poverty has forced them to live in a single-family system, having no grandfather, uncle, and in-laws staying with them in their mud houses. Scavenging is not a family profession as parents or elders of majority of them have no history of this profession. They have no chance to get education and therefore they are illiterate. In a nutshell they are property less, unemployed and non-skilled people, lower than the rank of proletariats. A wall clock, a fan, a radio, a broken mirror and a sheep are their sole property. Even some among them have nothing except ‘charpaies’ at homes. Those who own a bicycle are considered as rich and an ideal to follow. Their daily income is Rs. 40 to 100 with the exception of Karkhano market, the largest black market of foreign goods, where rag pickers earn Rs 150 to 250. Perhaps one reason of making more money at this place is practice of theft and begging as confessed by some children. All of them are suffering from some kind of illness. The most common illnesses are Ear Nose and Throat infections, spinal pain, rashes, skin related problems, fever, headache and cough.

Sexual abuse
They are very careful, particularly the girl rag pickers, in dealing with the people at roads and residential areas. Girls are more vulnerable as not only men in the market and work place but also their co-workers try to abuse them sexually. That is why female rag pickers seldom go around all alone. They work in groups of two are more otherwise their brothers accompany them. In a traditionally Pashtoon society girls are confined to home at the age of 10, therefore one could hardly see a female rag picker of 10 or above. For Anzoor, girls are lucky than boys, as they retired from this filthy profession at a very young age.

Girls and boys all are aware of the fact that there are many predators, on roads and residential areas, who want to hunt and exploit them sexually. Majority of the abusers are policemen, shopkeepers, choakidars (watchmen), junkyardsowners, old men and sometime coworkers. Apart from sexual abuse, verbal abuse and beating at homes and the workplace is a part of their daily life.

Attitude towards Society and Psychological problems
The rag pickers believe that people dislike them because “they dress in dirty clothes, their faces and hands are unclean, they smell badly and that they live unhealthy lives at dirty places”. They say people hate to socialize with them and “everyone wants to keep a distance”. They are generally considered to be the untouchables of our society and they know it. The feelings of such a derogated status in society has cultivated an extreme sense of inferiority complex, coupled with fear, alienation and revenge.

As a consequence, many among them are the victims of nightmares, seeing dangerous animals or beasts, someone cutting their throats with sharp knives, extremely smelly things, syringes, bodies and other frightening things and people. They have restless sleep at night. As they are suspicious of each and everyone outside their business, therefore they don’t trust anyone. Anyone out side their profession could be an abuser, agent of police, kidnapper or anything else but not a friend. They talk about speculations (or perhaps truth) that a gang of criminals in Peshawar kidnaps scavengers for tearing up their bodies to sell their body parts at hospitals. They are afraid of hunger and jail but police, dogs, shopkeepers, old men and choukidars at residential areas and at the gates of hospitals are their real enemies.

National laws and international conventions are not ready to accept them as labor force because they are children. Society has no sympathy for them and is not ready to accept them as children. They are living with a double-edged sword, stabbed in their stomach. Opening of a few schools, hospitals or rehabilitation centers for them may be a good idea but it is just impossible to solve their problems and rehabilitate them within the society. The only rehabilitation of rag pickers could be a compulsory education system with some monitory help of their poor families and complete ban on waste collection by children. Let us hope for a welfare state and a civilized world where every child would have the right to go to school, live with dignity without any fear of harassment and with the right to be young instead of never young.