From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERTHE CHANGING WORLD OF WORKAsha, aged 13, is one of 2,000 rag-pickers in the city of Nashik in India,an important religious centre on the Godavari River, 185km north ofMumbai. Asha has been rag-picking for around six years. Like otheryoung rag-pickers, she heads out to go rag-picking as soon as she getsup, working solidly for around four hours every morning. In the afternoon,from 12pm to 5pm, she goes to school, where she is in eighthgrade. After school, she comes home to help her mother around thehouse and care for her two younger sisters and her younger brother.‘My life is rag-picking, school, and household chores,’ she says.‘I don’thave any friends or any entertainment.’ 89In many developing countries, rubbish recyclers epitomise thestruggle to survive. Moving like wraiths through the fumes and smokeof burning rubbish heaps on the fringes of the city, such as Manila’sevocatively named (but deeply unpleasant) ‘smoky mountain’, theyare mostly women and children from the most marginalised groups.From the city dump, rubbish bins in residential streets, or vacant land,rag-pickers collect tin, paper, plastic, bones, copper, metal, or glass,which they then sell to scrap merchants for cash. Beatings, rapes, dogattacks, harassment, injuries, illness, and abuse are a daily reality, andexploitation at the hands of the buyers is common.Urban residents, particularly those living in poverty like Asha, relyprimarily upon wage labour or self-employment to survive. In ruralareas too, growing numbers of families rely on paid work, either148