Global crisis hits Asia's scavengers
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 12:05:00 01/07/2009
Filed Under: World Financial Crisis, Poverty
SINGAPORE--Zheng Jie Wo, 76, cuts a diminutive figure as she hunches over bags of waste paper, used plastic bags and discarded boxes.
She stands out among the white-collar crowd in Singapore's business district, sifting through recycleable rubbish that she spent the previous night scavenging to sell.
Life was already hard for Zheng and other scavengers across Asia. Now, with the world's economy in its worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, things have become much worse.
The scavengers, already among the region's poorest, say their incomes have dropped by half or even more in recent months.
"I used to be able to make 10 to 20 Singapore dollars ($7 to $14) a day, but now I make only a few dollars at the most," said Zheng, huddled in an alley with flies buzzing around her.
Aside from being partly deaf, Zheng has chronic arthritis, which causes intermittent pain in her joints and leaves her unable to use most of her fingers.
"I barely have enough to pay for my medical expenses," she says.
Despite her handicaps, Zheng says she has to "work even harder than before" because the price of recycleables has fallen so low.
Adi Priyatna, 23, a scavenger in Jakarta, also struggles to sell the plastic water bottles, cardboard, bottles and broken buckets that he collects.
"I used to get 75,000 rupiah ($6.64 dollars) a day. Now I get 15,000," he said, adding that these days he can only afford to feed his family once a day.
"This is the toughest time since I started scavenging five years ago. I cannot smoke cigarettes and drink coffee anymore."
In Manila, there is a similar tale of hardship.
Garbage dumps have become home to tens of thousands of people who rake over mountains of refuse for anything that can be recycled for a few hundred pesos.
"A few months ago I could make around P150 ($3.13 dollars) a day selling scrap metal but not any more," said Arman Santos, one of the scavengers.
Recycling collection points used to buy a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of scrap metal for about P20, he said. "Today you are lucky if you get P10."
Junk shops contacted by AFP in Manila said the price of paper and plastic have also dropped, leaving scrap exporters such as Jerome Uy struggling.
Uy bought plastic and metal from smaller junk shops and exported it to China for reprocessing.
"No one buys scraps in China any more and I'm stuck with a large inventory and it is hard to sell them in the local market," he said.
China's industrial output growth slowed to 5.4 percent in November from a year earlier, its weakest pace in more than a decade, official data showed.
Like the broader Chinese economy, caught in a rare slowdown caused by the global crisis, China's waste collectors are suffering.
"Prices are slumping. This trade is getting harder and harder," said Li Xincun, 45, dressed in an old blue Mao suit, as he pulled his tricycle along the roads of central Beijing looking for marketable trash.
"Now I cannot even earn enough money for my daily expenses," said Li, whose daily income has dropped to below 30 yuan ($4.4), the price of a few bowls of noodles, and less than half what he made as recently as in May.
With the global economy in crisis, prices for the main household waste recycled in China -- such as plastic, paper, steel and aluminium -- have plummeted by more than 60 percent since August.
In Singapore, people in the trade say prices of recycleables have sunk to less than half the levels of just three months ago, with some falling almost two thirds in value.
Standard Chartered bank economist Alvin Liew said that, as the global crisis hits consumer demand for electronic and similar items, there is less demand for the material to pack them -- which translates into lower income for scavengers.
Liew did not see the situation improving any time soon. "We are still expecting a recovery, but it will come in 2010," he said.
Some scavengers might not last that long.
"My salary has been badly affected. In fact, I am losing money doing this business now, and many of the people in the same line want to quit," said a Singaporean scavenger who gave his name only as Tan.
"Some of my friends cannot even cover their daily expenses."
Li, the Beijing scavenger, said that if things do not get better fast he plans to return to the family farm, "and not come back to the city".
Others, though, see no choice but to continue their struggle.
"I keep forcing myself to do this. I have to make a living for my mother and my three siblings," said Priyatna in Jakarta.
Zheng, in Singapore, says she is too old and too sick to do anything else.
"Even if the prices drop further, I will still have to do this. There is nothing else I can do," she says.
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