How Abuja Female Scavengers, Others Survive On Waste

Usaina Maman Haidar, a resident of Angwan Bare-Bari, Kado, Abuja, has spoken about her business as a scavenger.

She said that her scavenging business assists in paying her children’s school fees and also feeds her.

Usaina Maman Haidar, who has been in the business for up to a year, buys used wigs and clothes for resale from her male counterpart scavengers at the Abuja waste dump site.

Speaking exclusively to the PUNCH, the mother of seven told our correspondent that she also realises up to N1,000 per day and N3 to N4 thousand per week.

She said: “We come here to the waste dump site to buy used wigs and clothes, wash them, and resell them to potential buyers, the money is used to pay for our children’s school fees and feeding. We buy from our male counterparts because we are women and cannot mingle in their midst.

“I can make up to a thousand naira in a day. We sell a wig for three hundred Naira or even four hundred.”

Also narrating her experience Nana Mansir, a widow and mother of seven, said she is in the business because she lost her breadwinner about a year and a half ago and she needed to take care of her little children.

“I have seven children, their father is dead and since then I have no one to take care of us.”

In his separate remarks, a scavenger, Salisu Nasir, explained that anyone who is found at the waste dump site is there just for survival because it is a trade that no one wishes to indulge in for long, and considering that the health hazards associated with this form of trade are enormous, there is nothing one can do.

Nasiru said: “Anyone you find here was brought by the will of God looking for how to survive, which is the reason we are here. This type of trade and any others are all associated with challenges, as you can see here.

The 18-year-old primary school drop-out further maintained that “nobody who does this type of work wishes to scavenge forever because of the hazards and other things, adding that he looks forward to going back to finish his studies.”

Earlier, at a sightseeing event by students of Pearls Learning Hub, Abuja, on Thursday, at the dump site, a staff member of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board, Mr. Francis, while conducting about 100 students studying “Deploying the power of IT-engaged youth in effective plastic use and waste management”, around the site, stated that “Abuja evacuates about 100 to 110 trucks that evacuate solid waste from the capital city daily, which is 900 metric tonnes in the open dump site, which is not an engineered field.

“This is the first stage of the informal sector collection of waste because separation at source is not perfect, but when it gets to 80% success in separation at source, naturally all this will go”, he said.

He added that “the board allows scavengers to do their scavenging exercise within the dump site because if they go to the bins, they scatter the waste everywhere and sometimes steal also. So, in curtailing all of that, we allow them here, but as soon as we curtail our recycling process, we will incorporate them into the system because when you leave them out you are creating a nuisance to the city.”

In his remarks, the Managing Director of Pearls Learning Hub, Adeola Odusote, pointed out that the programme established what it promised to do and achieved enlightenment by visiting the site to learn the ways of waste collection and management.

Odusote, remarking further, said “We are talking about the problem of waste management; if these people, the scavengers, are not working, we will be in trouble.

He maintained that “as yet they work many things happen, so, the challenge for the whole spectrum of the society, the law should be right and we should understand how to catch people who do wrong things and discipline them and deal with them.”

“I have heard many people say they are carrying dirt around at times; they put drugs, weapons, or other things under. Where are the police and other enforcement agents?”