JEDDAH, 19 November 2007 — Ali is a young Chadian man who lives, works and eats in and from Jeddah’s trash dump.
“The dump is my life and I don’t know what to do when it’s relocated,” he said, referring to the municipality’s plans to relocate the dump to a larger, more modern complex, one that will also be fenced-in, making it difficult for men like Ali to continue their trade. The new dump is tentatively scheduled to open in January and will reportedly include recycling and reclamation facilities.
Ali is one of hundreds who see the hidden treasures in what is known to the rest of us as garbage. These nearly 150 trash-dump recyclers seek their wealth by burning garbage to expose metals and collect whatever can be sold as raw material.
This act of survival, however, has caused major discomfort to nearby residential areas that are choking from the noxious smoke of the fires that burn plastics, tires, cables, anything that might contain metals inside that can be sold.
Most if not all the trash-dump pickers are illegal residents in the Kingdom. The fact they call the Jeddah trash dump home perhaps provides insight into the situations these men likely left in their home countries. But for local residents, these men represent a nuisance. Recently, a controlled trash-dump fire got out of control and burned for days, exacerbating the smog in the neighborhoods near the dump site and further elevating the ire of residents and the municipality.
“There is a lot of wealth in this place,” said Muhammad, a middle-aged man from Chad who, like Ali, resides in the dump which is located 40 km to the east of Briman.
He expressed worry about the closure of the dump, saying that he and his fellow workers were constantly discussing what to do when their livelihoods relocated behind what will likely be the guarded fence of the new trash dump.
These men are somewhat organized; Muhammad said everyone there works under a unified guild headed by two African men who bring some law and order in the small landfill community. (This is not unique to Saudi Arabia. The pickers of the trash dumps in Mexico City and Sao Paulo, for example, have their own labor unions and even some advocacy and representation in the city councils.)
Muhammad noted that there are different levels of workers among the garbage society based on their nationality and age. “The longer time you work here, the closer you get to higher ranks,” he said.
The workers have built primitive shelters from dumped wood, metal and cartons around the landfill’s surrounding hills. The landfill community even has cafeterias poking up from the garbage, eateries where expired foodstuffs that had been sent to the dump by the city’s restaurants, grocery stores and purveyors are recovered and consumed by the locals.
According to a Jeddah Municipality press release, expired foodstuff trucks are commonly raided on the way to the dump. The food taken from these trucks often ends up back in Jeddah to be sold illegally. The problem has gotten so bad that the municipality now provides police escorts for these dump trucks. But once the expired food reaches the dump itself, the landfill community salvages it and consumes it.
Because of the area’s rugged terrain, it has been difficult for the authorities to round up the illegal residents and deport them. According to Ahmad Al-Ghamdi, the Jeddah Municipality spokesman, more than 30 officials were sent to crack down on the landfill community recently following the out-of-control fire. They say that the trash pickers aren’t just a nuisance, but also endangering themselves.
“There have been many deaths in the city dump because of the carelessness of the illegal expatriates,” he said. Some of these deaths have been caused by sleeping men being accidentally buried in the trash when trucks come to dump their loads.
A municipality official who did not want to speak on the record said that part of the problem with cracking down on these trash pickers is that some of the officials sent to the dump are engaged in corruption. He attributes this corruption to the low salaries of these inspectors: SR2,000 a month.
Apparently the landfill community leaders have money. The official said that during one of the raids, they found an African worker who was in possession of $1500 (SR5,600), which he said was profit from the sale of salvageable from the trash dump. Since the inspectors receive modest salaries it is more likely, said the official, that some have been offered protection money from garbage diggers, which illustrates that there’s riches to be found even in trash.
At the new landfill, a massive concrete wall will prevent any infiltration, according to Al-Ghamdi, the municipal spokesman. “It is hoped to end the problem of environment pollution and garbage digging,” he said.
Al-Ghamdi noted that municipality security officials have reported on several occasions some illegal expatriates scouting the new landfill as if they were checking the possibilities of entering.
Ali, Muhammad and the rest of the members of garbage city, are still wondering where to go and what the future holds.
Meanwhile, the struggle between city hall and the landfill community continues, as does the struggle of poverty and illegal immigration that has created this problem.
