This episode of Kasa Shramika Parisara Rakshaka brings you an interview with Vijay Kumar, who works as a security guard at the landfill near Nelamangala. Waste from wedding halls, drainage pipes, roads, and market areas are dumped here. Nelamangala has 23 wards and the waste from all these wards coagulates here.

Bangalore-based NGO Hasirudala has been working in this area for the past five years. Five families reside here in tented accommodations. These residents collect different types of recyclable waste materials and sell it to Dry Waste Collection Centres (DWCCs). This is how they earn their living. In times of heavy rains, this place floods up and begins to smell rank. The eight children of waste pickers here often play in this contaminated water, unaware of its harmful effects. Even weekly medicine supplies aren’t helping them.

The residents here have a place to convert waste into manure; the machine they use for this cuts down huge pieces into smaller chunks. Manure produced by this process is bought by farmers.

The medical waste that comes here is often mixed with other waste, making it difficult to segregate it. In some situations, Vijay Kumar has even seen the collected waste catching fire. He keeps some sprays handy nowadays to stop such fires and he makes it a point to inform other authorities if he is unable to stop a fire.

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Written by Ramya Gowda K.