People home       A rag pickers story     By Maja Garnaas, Mari Steinert and Nae Kaneko   Photo: Caroline Ellingsen     Sandraj Marwah is a rag picker. Earlier he worked at the landfill, but with help from the NGO Chintan, he is now working as a sweeper. The job is to collect garbage from private homes and carry it onto the truck that transports it to the landfill. He told us that he used to live in a place called Kotla. He has a wife and two kids around six years old. The kids have just attended school, at first grade.       What are your experiences with garbage management being privatized? I don’t think it is a good thing that garbage collection became privatized. Private contractors hire us to fill the garbage onto the trucks. Earlier we would get 4 rupees per kilo waste we collected, now we get only 2 rupees pr kilo. We are also forced to sell the segregated waste to the private contractors, earlier we could sell it to the re-processors directly and get better paid.     How is this enforced by the private companies? Private contractors have the main right to the garbage. If we don’t agree on their conditions they can tell us to leave. So we really have no choice: either we have to leave, or sell at the price that the contractors decide.   Have you ever had any trouble with the police? Yes, just two days ago they came and bothered me during my work. They hit me in the stomach without any reason. The police don’t see any value in the work we are doing.   Is it common to use any tools or cover your hands while handling the garbage?   We don’t use anything. If you wear gloves it would be very difficult to feel the materials.   Have you ever been hurt or had any serious health problems from doing this job? I often get pieces of glass in my hands and sometimes cuts from shave blades when I segregate the garbage. It is a problem that the garbage from hospitals is thrown together with other kinds of waste.   Do you have other income? I have 3/28 of an acre of land in my hometown. But it is impossible to make a living out of that because diesel and other kinds of inputs needed for cultivation is too expensive.   If you had a choice, would you still be doing this job? This job gives me 100-150 rupees a day. If any other job could give me the same salary, why would I want to put my hands into garbage everyday?   Related links: Chintan, environmental research in action.