A garbage picker at work at the Khanh Son dumpsite in Da Nang City.

Stable income from a dumpsite in the central Da Nang City has kept hundreds of people sifting through garbage despite the health hazards.

They use some plastic bags from the ground, which holds around 1.5 million tons of waste a day, to use as protective gloves.

Nguyen Van Xung, a garbage picker at Khanh Son for 12 years now, said his paddy field back home in neighboring Quang Nam Province had been taken for some projects and he and his wife were not trained for any other job.

Earnings from the garbage dump have helped Xung take care of a family of six.

Nguyen Thi Lat started on this job 10 years ago also after her cultivation land was taken and her husband didn’t earn enough as a mason.

“Now my two children can attend primary school just like any other city children,” Lat said proudly.

Many elders who cannot be employed anywhere else are also attracted to the job, though most pickers have caught skin, intestine and respiratory diseases from the work.

In July 2006 a mother and son fainted after breathing in a solution dumped by the state-run Da Nang Urban Environment Company. Another boy was hospitalized for burns after he accidentally stepped in the solution while looking for scrap.

The Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper found out the company did not know what the solution was and had only been hired to dump the solution for VND27.5 million.

Authorities of Lien Chieu District where the dumpsite is located, have set up a job-changing plan for the trash collectors, but they have refused because there are very few jobs that can guarantee hem their current income from the dump.

An order by the Da Nang government to close the site by June 30 has not been implemented and an extension until September 30 has also been missed.

Pham Hong Quang, head of the Hoa Khanh Nam Ward in Lien Chieu District, said the garbage pickers will visit local government offices and protest any policy that affects their income, however right it is.

A study by the ward showed that if the dumping ground was closed, 30 percent of the collectors who are old people will need social welfare assistance, 40 percent would need vocational training and the rest would need preferential loans to start their own business.

Source: VNA