CAIRO: The heaps of disgusting garbage infesting the streets and squares of all Cairo neighborhoods have been nothing short of a national scourge. The ongoing rift between the foreign cleaning companies, the government and the traditional garbage collectors has triggered a sanitation crisis in both affluent and poor neighborhoods.
During the Premiership of Atef Ebeid in 2002, the government decided to replace the traditional garbage collector (zabal) with multinational cleaning companies and environmental conglomerates around the world in a step to introduce modern technology in collecting, sorting and recycling waste.
“Cairo produces 13,000 tons of waste daily. 80 percent of it is collected but we cannot leave out the remaining 20 percent, said Mohamed Laban, former general chairman of the Cairo Cleaning and Beautification Agency.
Three companies, one Italian and two Spanish, were contracted to collect garbage, clean the streets, build landfills, and recycle charging a fee of $500 million to be added to electricity bills.
Local government officials offered the zabbaleen the option of joining the new collection crews.
For garbage collectors who managed their own businesses, the idea of making LE 5 a day was unthinkable since they were averaging at least LE 50 a day on their own.
“We work almost 20 hours each day and make LE 1,000-1,500 a month from both collecting garbage and recycling it, said Milad, a garbage collector.
A year after the new companies began their operations, it was evident that they needed to enlist the help of the traditional zabbaleen, who were hired as subcontractors doing door-to-door collections for a small fee paid by residents.
Saad Omran, a senior garbage collector, said, “We know the Egyptian pattern of living, how they dispose of garbage. You can’t simply bring someone from outside and apply their system here. It was bound to fail.
“Egyptians are used to door-to-door service and won’t [go to the trouble of disposing their garbage] in public containers placed in front of buildings. They need someone to do this for them on a daily basis, he argued. “They need us. Zabbleen empire
The pungent odors of decaying waste will guide you into one of the poorest districts of Cairo: Manshiet Nasser, home to at least 60,000 people, known as the zabbaleen community. It’s the largest of the country’s six garbage hubs.
Around the end of the 19th Century, a group of migrant tribes known as the Wahiya moved to this area from Upper Egypt to settle down in the desert slums of the city’s outskirts to collect garbage in donkey-pulled wooden carts. On their own initiative, they sorted the waste and traded it, under contract with building owners.
About 85 percent of this community, which gathers more than half of the 13,000 tons of municipal solid waste Cairo produces every day, is Coptic Christian, and 15 percent Muslim, with an average of eight members per family. The illiteracy rates there have reached almost 70 percent.
Until the 1980s, there was no formal system of waste collection in Cairo. All collection was performed by the zabbaleen.
In her latest novel “Ahlam et les éboueurs du Caire , Fawzia Assaad documented with great accuracy, detail and precision the true story of the garbage collectors of Cairo, portraying the reality of their marginal existence in all its brutality.
With a bachelor and PhD degree from the Sorbonne, Assaad, an Egyptian novelist who writes in French, had immigrated to Switzerland almost 50 years ago.
“My personal, day to day encounter made me part of them. I spent long hours sitting next to Abou Nane on his dekka, recording in my mind their lives, their prejudices, their hopes. I got to know the whole family and developed motherly feelings towards them, Assaad told the Daily News Egypt in an email interview.
“I think they make life possible for us. We spoil the atmosphere and they clean it for us. We should call them nazzafine [cleaners] not zabbaleen [garbage people].
A recent study conducted by the Research Institute of Land and Water Environment revealed that the garbage of Cairo is one of the richest in the world, generating annual revenues that could exceed LE 5 billion. One ton of garbage, says the repot, could be worth up to LE 6,000 ($1,090) since it comprises a lot of recyclable material to be used in a multitude of industries.
The zabbaleen purportedly recycle 80-90 percent of the waste they collect – a figure that the most modern waste management systems in the world aspire to – compared to the 20 percent the foreign companies were expected to recycle in compliance with the contract.
In a recent report, the BBC claimed that the zabbaleen are more environmentally friendly than the mechanized garbage crushing trucks from Europe, and they represent one of the world’s most innovative and efficient models of solid waste disposal, that have been imitated in other cities, including Manila, Bombay, and Los Angeles.
Assaad concurs.
“The government should have prolonged their efforts, instead of asking the international societies to come and destroy their system. They found a way out of poverty, they managed the recycling business at the expense of their well-being, and they took care of our garbage. They succeeded in this complex business much better than the Western countries. We look too much towards the West, and do not see what is creative in our country, said Assaad.
The future of this profession, and the zabbaleen themselves, remains uncertain. Amid the growing swine flu scare, the Egyptian government had decided to cull the nation’s nearly 350,000 pigs, much to the detriment of the zabbaleen who depended on pigs who fed on thousands of tons of organic waste.
It was only a matter of time before Cairo turned into one huge landfill.
“After they slaughtered all pigs, they left us no choice but to leave out the organic waste and instead only pick the plastic and metal garbage. That’s what I look for in a dump, and I leave the rest to pill up, said Mohamed Atta, a zabal.
