Ajantha Perera
How did you first get involved with the rag pickers?
After being away from Colombo for 17 years, I was so shocked by the piles of garbage seemingly left out on the roadside – I had to find out why. So I went to Colombo’s main dump site to find out what was happening. It was hell. About 500 tonnes of rubbish was being deposited there every day in an open dump site.
I saw people who looked so dirty that it was hard to see them moving among the rubbish. Little by little, I began talking to them and discovered that they actually made a living from the dump site and lived in roughly built houses at its edges. These people would collect paper, glass, plastic, cardboard, tins and tyres, which they sold to the nearby shops. The shops then sold the materials on to the recycling industries. I saw an opportunity and started a campaign to encourage people to divide their rubbish into paper, plastics, glass and household waste for the rag pickers to collect from their houses instead of sorting through the dump. I then got the minister of co-operatives [small, cheap multi-purpose shops] to implement a new programme whereby plastic, paper or glass can be exchanged for food. It’s fantastic because it’s based on a system that was already working and was developed by the people themselves.
What is the rag pickers’ situation in Colombo?
We have about 10,000 rag pickers in Colombo alone. It’s an awful situation and these people are struggling to survive. Their houses are made from tin sheets and planks of wood, and filthy rainwater regularly floods their homes. Their toilets are underwater, there’s no electricity and usually just a communal water tap. The living conditions are so bad that some of them take drugs. Despite all this, they seem to be very united. Christian Aid has been helping us by trying to repair or rebuild their homes, get them some new clothes, nice saris and some perfumes; through that they’ve gained a new spirit. It’s so important that they know that somebody cares about them, that they’re not totally forgotten.
How are rag pickers treated by the rest of society?
These people aren’t regarded as part of the community. People try to ignore them and keep them at a distance so that they won’t have to think about the issue. My major hurdle was really to give some kind of value to these people. Since I first started going to the dump site, there’s been a huge transformation in them – they’ve gained more confidence. When I first invited them to meetings, they used to come in their rags, stinking, but now they come in clean clothes – there’s a sense of pride. In our efforts to get them into the recycling industry, we’ve given them identity cards, so they are now legitimate citizens who feel they belong to society.
What is it actually like at the dumps?
There are a lot of sharp objects in the dump site, including hospital waste, and I’ve seen some huge cuts on some of the rag pickers. Because they are working in a dirty environment, the wounds get infected. There is a lot of disease, too. After I’ve visited a dump site, I’m often in bed for a couple of days suffering from flu-like symptoms. Even though you know it’s a dangerous place to visit, you can’t show it; you would hurt their feelings so much. The kids there are amazing – they’ve grown up in that environment and seem to have incredible immune systems. With Christian Aid, we take doctors to them, and often the only thing they find is that the children are anaemic, because of their diet.
Were you really sacked for bringing some rag pickers to work with you?
Yes. I invited the minister for science to come to the university and also onto the TV programme [Ajantha was also the presenter of a prime-time TV show called The Welcome Programme] and nobody knew that the speakers were going to be rag pickers. The minister for science was OK about it – he was fascinated by them – but the academics didn’t like it at all. In the end, I lost my job. They thought I was trying to turn the whole place upside down. When you bring these people to the forefront, the rest of society feels threatened; they don’t want the structure to change – the middle classes prefer to keep them down. I don’t agree with that at all, so I don’t mind losing any job over it. I think it’s important for the next generation to learn about these things.
What are your plans for the future?
Well, already a lot has changed; recycling has become a way of life. Before we started working on this, there was no single word in Sinhalese for recycling and in 1995, we had to make one up: prathichakkreekaranaya. The term is now included in the certificate of education syllabus. At the moment, I am working towards getting the rag pickers into the recycling industry and pushing the government of Sri Lanka to take a decision and use recycling as a way of solving the garbage problem. It hasn’t been easy and there are still 100,000 things to do. But along with Christian Aid, we haven’t given up.
After being away from Colombo for 17 years, I was so shocked by the piles of garbage seemingly left out on the roadside – I had to find out why. So I went to Colombo’s main dump site to find out what was happening. It was hell. About 500 tonnes of rubbish was being deposited there every day in an open dump site.
I saw people who looked so dirty that it was hard to see them moving among the rubbish. Little by little, I began talking to them and discovered that they actually made a living from the dump site and lived in roughly built houses at its edges. These people would collect paper, glass, plastic, cardboard, tins and tyres, which they sold to the nearby shops. The shops then sold the materials on to the recycling industries. I saw an opportunity and started a campaign to encourage people to divide their rubbish into paper, plastics, glass and household waste for the rag pickers to collect from their houses instead of sorting through the dump. I then got the minister of co-operatives [small, cheap multi-purpose shops] to implement a new programme whereby plastic, paper or glass can be exchanged for food. It’s fantastic because it’s based on a system that was already working and was developed by the people themselves.
What is the rag pickers’ situation in Colombo?
We have about 10,000 rag pickers in Colombo alone. It’s an awful situation and these people are struggling to survive. Their houses are made from tin sheets and planks of wood, and filthy rainwater regularly floods their homes. Their toilets are underwater, there’s no electricity and usually just a communal water tap. The living conditions are so bad that some of them take drugs. Despite all this, they seem to be very united. Christian Aid has been helping us by trying to repair or rebuild their homes, get them some new clothes, nice saris and some perfumes; through that they’ve gained a new spirit. It’s so important that they know that somebody cares about them, that they’re not totally forgotten.
How are rag pickers treated by the rest of society?
These people aren’t regarded as part of the community. People try to ignore them and keep them at a distance so that they won’t have to think about the issue. My major hurdle was really to give some kind of value to these people. Since I first started going to the dump site, there’s been a huge transformation in them – they’ve gained more confidence. When I first invited them to meetings, they used to come in their rags, stinking, but now they come in clean clothes – there’s a sense of pride. In our efforts to get them into the recycling industry, we’ve given them identity cards, so they are now legitimate citizens who feel they belong to society.
What is it actually like at the dumps?
There are a lot of sharp objects in the dump site, including hospital waste, and I’ve seen some huge cuts on some of the rag pickers. Because they are working in a dirty environment, the wounds get infected. There is a lot of disease, too. After I’ve visited a dump site, I’m often in bed for a couple of days suffering from flu-like symptoms. Even though you know it’s a dangerous place to visit, you can’t show it; you would hurt their feelings so much. The kids there are amazing – they’ve grown up in that environment and seem to have incredible immune systems. With Christian Aid, we take doctors to them, and often the only thing they find is that the children are anaemic, because of their diet.
Were you really sacked for bringing some rag pickers to work with you?
Yes. I invited the minister for science to come to the university and also onto the TV programme [Ajantha was also the presenter of a prime-time TV show called The Welcome Programme] and nobody knew that the speakers were going to be rag pickers. The minister for science was OK about it – he was fascinated by them – but the academics didn’t like it at all. In the end, I lost my job. They thought I was trying to turn the whole place upside down. When you bring these people to the forefront, the rest of society feels threatened; they don’t want the structure to change – the middle classes prefer to keep them down. I don’t agree with that at all, so I don’t mind losing any job over it. I think it’s important for the next generation to learn about these things.
What are your plans for the future?
Well, already a lot has changed; recycling has become a way of life. Before we started working on this, there was no single word in Sinhalese for recycling and in 1995, we had to make one up: prathichakkreekaranaya. The term is now included in the certificate of education syllabus. At the moment, I am working towards getting the rag pickers into the recycling industry and pushing the government of Sri Lanka to take a decision and use recycling as a way of solving the garbage problem. It hasn’t been easy and there are still 100,000 things to do. But along with Christian Aid, we haven’t given up.
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