Daily battles of Bengaluru’s waste collectors Premium

Although the BBMP, which has given contracts for door-to-door waste collection from homes, has directed the contractors to pay salaries promptly, this is hardly ever adhered to.

31-year-old Harikumar’s family of seven is crammed into a single room-and-a-kitchen house at Siddharth Colony near Vidya Peetha in Bengaluru. Married at an early age, he has three children, wife, mother, and father to feed. Harikumar works as a waste collector. About a year ago, he was forced to sell his passenger auto to meet emergency medical expenses. As doctors advised C-section for his wife to arrange money, he was left with no choice but to sell his autorickshaw and borrow money. His debt is mounting as his employer has not paid him for the past four months. 

Every morning, waste collectors diligently collect waste from homes in Bengaluru. Yet, they carry an invisible burden, one that goes unnoticed by the millions they serve. The silent suffering of thousands of waste collectors in Bengaluru remains ignored, their struggles hidden from the world around them. Left in the lurch by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and at the mercy of the contractors, the civic workers’ pleas have remained unaddressed for decades. 

Peddamma, the mother of Harikumar, burst into tears describing the daily suffering the family is undergoing. “To make ends meet, in my old age, I have to work. I am employed as a housekeeper in a college. I earn ₹8,000 per month, of which ₹6,000 is spent on rent, power and television cable bills. The remaining is utilised for food and miscellaneous things. Every month, we have to borrow money for the children’s needs. My son’s salary, which is credited once in four or five months, is used to repay loans to local money lenders. Besides local money lenders, we owe at least ₹50,000 to our neighbours,” she sobbed.

Pointing to his wailing one-year-old son, Harikumar says he cannot afford to feed his child the way a middle-class family does. He cannot afford toys for his two daughters, who are enrolled in a government school. “Some days, I feel numb watching them playing imaginary games with pencils. Pencil is a tool for both play and study.”

Yet, every day, he turns up for work at 7 a.m. to collect waste from the homes assigned to him.

In January 2023, the vehicle in which M. Vijayakumar, who drives a vehicle collection vehicle, was travelling overturned in Andhra Pradesh. He was travelling to attend a local fair at his village in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. Due to the impact, he sustained bone fractures near his chest and back, for which he had to shell out ₹1.5 lakh. He and his wife Nirmala have now sent their two children to their hometown as they both have to toil in the city.

In the absence of a regular salary, Nirmala has to cover the monthly expenses. Vijyakumar said Nirmala walks a total of 9 km to and fro, as she has taken up a job as a helper at a printing press. “As I am not paid monthly, I also work as a bathroom cleaner at two nearby bars. But the money they give is not sufficient,” he rued.