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FEATURE-Senegal waste pickers fight dump closure amid hazards and health risks

by Nadia Beard | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Wednesday, 23 November 2016 14:00 GMT

Bokk Diom manager Pape Mar Diallo stands in front of recycler Marcel Gomis in Mbeubeuss, Senegal, Oct. 4, 2016.

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Dakar's rubbish dump is releasing a poison that has halted construction projects across the city - but informal workers want to stay

By Nadia Beard

DAKAR, Nov 23 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - At the top of a hill in the heart of Senegal's largest rubbish dump, 47-year-old Didou Farai watched as hundreds of workers armed with metal rods picked through piles of waste in search of recyclable materials to sell.

Despite dire conditions, deadly accidents and toxic air, Mbeubeuss, a sprawling landfill in a suburb of Dakar, is a lifeline for thousands like Farai - allowing them to make a modest living in a country where one in eight are unemployed.

Yet with no rights to the land, the estimated 3,500 workers who salvage, sell and recycle materials from the site fear their livelihoods will be wiped out if the Senegalese government pushes ahead with plans to close Mbeubeuss in the coming years.

"If they close it I'm afraid I'll no longer be able to earn a living," Farai told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "I've lived and worked here for over 10 years - I don't know what job I could do if I didn't have this."

Mbeubeuss - a sprawling 175-hectare (432 acre) site that takes 475,000 tonnes of waste each year - is one of several ballooning open dumps across West Africa, where residents are pitted against environmental activists and government officials.

In Ghana, the Agbogbloshie landfill has become the world's largest dumping ground for electronic waste, while Nigeria's Olusosun dump is an incubator for deadly waterborne diseases.

If left unchecked, Mbeubeuss could pollute the land, water and air, causing long-term health problems and claiming lives, several of Dakar's activists fear. Some say the landfill's environmental fallout is already causing problems city wide.

"Leachate (liquid that drains from a landfill) is a poison and it flows into the groundwater ... all drilling works in Dakar are on hold because of this pollution," said Haidar El Ali, president of Senegal's Green Party and the country's former ecology minister.

"No questions of employment and no lack of resources can justify such a serious public health issue," Ali added.

Pickers stand atop a hill at the edge of Platform, Mbeubeuss, Senegal, Oct 4, 2016

DIRTY, DANGEROUS WORK

Having started out in the 1960s as a small dump predominantly for organic waste, Mbeubeuss has mushroomed into one of the largest open dumps in the world.

"This whole area used to be a lake once - it was practically bush country with greenery everywhere," said El Hajj Amadou Diang, manager at the office for weighing the rubbish trucks.

"It's very different now," added Diang, who lives in a nearby village that has grown in tandem with the landfill site.

For the workers who cannot afford to live in the village, or reside further afield, makeshift sleeping areas full of worn mattresses close to the fly-ridden dumping ground - dirty and far from running water - serve as their homes during the week.

During long, arduous days at the site, the workers say they fear collisions with reversing rubbish trucks, which cause many casualties and sometimes deaths, and find themselves exposed to toxic gases and the constant stream of smoke from burning tyres.

Yet the hazards and health risks are trumped by the earnings in a country where the average annual income barely tops $1,000.

Recyclers like Farai, who buy materials which have been separated and sorted by pickers before selling them on in bulk to foreign companies, can earn around 6,000 francs ($10) per day - more than double the average daily salary ($4) in Senegal.

But the pickers, many of whom are children, take home less than a dollar a day, and with no official system of employment in place, work at Mbeubeuss is informal and insecure, leaving workers prey to fluctuations in the sale prices of materials.

The state's decision in 2012 to only allow Chinese firms to buy scrap metal had made things worse, recyclers at Mbeubeuss said, with less metal being bought and payments often delayed.

"When companies from China and India were buying, there was competition so we could get a good price," said Tabasky Ndiaye, a mason-turned-recycler who has collected scrap metal for over 20 years. "But suddenly that stopped. I earn a lot less now."

Pickers stand atop a hill at the edge of Platform, Mbeubeuss, Senegal, Oct 4, 2016

FEARS OVER FUTURE

Senegal tried to close down Mbeubeuss in 2008, when the construction of a new plant, SINDIA, in neighbouring Thies, was almost complete, but faced opposition from the site's workers, said Aita Seck, a state official from the environment ministry.

"The recyclers and pickers said no... (and) said they'd make a financial loss if they had to find work elsewhere."

Like many at Mbeubeuss, El Hajj Malick Diallo, head of the Bokk Diom Association of Scavengers and Recyclers, which helps workers by offering local services, fears that the closure of the site would threaten the livelihoods of thousands of people.

Instead, Diallo is pushing for the landfill site to stay open, and demanding that its conditions dramatically improve.

"We need better security, fewer accidents, improved facilities and conditions which prevent diseases," Diallo said in Bokk Diom. "It's up to the government to do this."

Yet with no protection under Senegal's land laws - which dictate that virtually all land belongs to the state - and widespread condemnation of Mbeubeuss by environmental activists, Diallo and his fellow workers have little bargaining power.

"It (Mbeubeuss) is a catastrophe for the environment," said Salimata Seck Wone, an environmental biochemist at the Dakar-based African Institute for Urban Management.

The state should close Mbeubeuss as soon as possible and open a site which is better for the environment, Wone added.

While current laws ban the transfer of waste from one city to another, all of Dakar's waste will have to be moved to the plant in Thies, if a suitable dumpsite cannot be found in the capital, the environment ministry said.

A rehabilitation project is being developed for Mbeubeuss' recyclers in preparation for when the site closes, including a plan to move some to the newer plant, SINDIA, according to Seck.

"SINDIA is only five years old and would offer far better conditions than Mbeubeuss," Seck said. "Although, there won't be enough jobs there to accommodate everyone currently working at Mbeubeuss," the environment ministry official added.

In the shade of some canvas tied to metal poles, Farai sat on a mattress, reflecting on his future.

"If I can't find work elsewhere, I'd have to relocate to wherever they move the site, and that could be anywhere," he said. "I don't want to move away because my family live here, but do I have a choice?"

(Reporting by Nadia Beard, Editing by Kieran Guilbert and Jo Griffin; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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