The cleaners of capital's two city corporations in association with local influential quarter have created syndicate to regulate business centering the waste management. Although the city corporation has fixed Tk 30 for collecting waste from the houses, influential people are taking three to 10 times higher than the city corporations' rate. The cleaners do not provide any receipt in most of the cases.
The City Corporation does not receive any portion of the money collected. Being a lucrative business, there are also incidents like garbage collection and occupation of the area. There are total 129 wards in the two City Corporations of Dhaka. 36 new wards are already being added with previous existing 93 wards. After randomly visiting in 15 wards and taking information during the last 30 days, this correspondent found huge irregularities in waste management.
Ferojul Isalm, a city dweller of capital’s Mirpur-6 area told Bangladesh Post, "Earlier, cleaners used to take Tk100 from each flat of the building for collecting waste. Now, they are saying that they each have to pay Tk150. Otherwise, they will not collect waste anymore." He also said, "The actual cleaner, who collect waste daily, do not collect money. Another person comes to collect money after the end of month."
Deep Das, a resident of Banani area said, "Cleaners collect Tk 300 from each flat. Sometimes we give them more. But they do not give us any receipt." Most of the field workers who collect waste from the households, do not get salary. And, they also even do not know that how much amount of money collected from which household.
Salam, 35, a waste collector said, "We do not know that how much money they take from households. They have separate people to collect money. We do not get any portion of the money. We just get some money after selling departed materials, collected from the waste."
There is no official data about how much money has been collected from whole Dhaka metropolitan area. However, an estimated amount found after talking to waste management concerns. According to two city corporations, there are some 3,95,000 holdings in Dhaka, of those, most of the holdings have six to 12 flats. On an average, Tk 150 has been collected from each flat per month. Approximately, they collect some Tk 40 crore per month and Tk 480 crore per year.
Besides, they also collect more than Tk 20 crore from more than 7,000 restaurant in the capital. Overall, they take round Tk 500 crore from this waste management business. A big portion of the the money goes to influential people of the two city corporations who regulate this cleaner group.
Apart from collecting more money than the city corporations fixed rate, some permanent cleaners remain absent at their working place. Besides, some cleaners are busy with other professions. While visiting different areas of the city including Moghbazar, Mugda, Notun Bazar and Mirpur, this correspondent found that waste collectors used to keep garbages beside Secondary Transfer Stations (STS) and some other people collect various materials from the wastes.
Sumon, 14, who was collecting waste from a dustbin, said, he do not get any salary for collecting waste. He just collect plastic, iron and electronic materials from the garbage and earn his livelihood by selling those to the vangari shops (shop of broken goods). Another cleaner Rubel, found in Mirpur area, who works as a hired substitute and get Tk3,000 per month.
The same scenario prevails in many areas including DSCC Zone 2, Ward 11, where another worker who sought anonymity, was working as a hired substitute. He said he has been working alone in the place instead of three appointed city corporations cleaner: Aman, Babul and Kader. “They don’t come to work, but they are shown present every day. They do other jobs and have own businesses. Cleaner Babul has a bird shop at Thadari Bazar in old town,” he added.
Officials at both city corporations said at least 20 percent cleaners remain absent each day. They recruit substitute workers, paying them somewhere between Tk500 to Tk5,000 per month, a practice that has been going on for a long time now. All the substitute workers are from impoverished areas of the country, where the poverty rate is high.
The conservancy workers or street cleaners as we know them, usually do other jobs or businesses instead of doing the job assigned to them by the corporations. They are able to do this bribing the Conservancy Inspector (CI), said several of them on condition of anonymity.
According to the Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) and Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC), more than 5,000 listed cleaners working for DSCC, and around 2,700 for DNCC. Besides, two city corporations also have more than 4,000 contractual cleaners.
Each master roll contractual worker gets Tk475 to Tk500 each day, which means they get between Tk14,250 and Tk15,000 each month, according to city corporations. Permanent workers get between Tk15,000 and Tk26,000, along with other facilities.