Egypt’s Christian Garbage Collectors Struggle for Rights and Recognition

Zabaleen: Egypt’s traditional garbage collectors struggle for recognition
ICC Note:
Living in Cairo’s slums are Egypt’s Christian garbage collectors, known as the Zabaleen. Long suppressed under former President Hosni Mubarak, they had hoped that the country’s new government would provide legal recognition of their trade and improved living conditions. This, however, has not been the case. “The state’s refusal to legitimise the Zabaleen’s honourable trade has forced them to become scavengers, selecting only valuable waste,” Marie Asaad, the development consultant and anthropologist for the Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE), told Ahram Online.
By Sarah El-Rashidi
10/25/2012 Egypt (Ahram Online)- The Zabaleen, Egypt’s traditional garbage collectors, had hoped that the country’s new Islamist government would meet their longstanding demands, in terms of both legal recognition of their trade and improved living conditions. But this, they say, has not appeared to be the case.
“Despite hopes for change after the Muslim Brotherhood-led government and President Mohamed Morsi, these have not legitimised our trade, hence the absence of a proper waste-management system,” asserts Ezzat Naem, member of the Mokattam garbage collectors community in Cairo and director of the Spirit of Youth Association for Environmental Services NGO. “Everything’s still a mess!”
“The state’s refusal to legitimise the Zabaleen’s honourable trade has forced them to become scavengers, selecting only valuable waste,” complained 90-year-old Marie Asaad, development consultant and anthropologist for the Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE), which has been working with Egypt’s Zabaleen for over 20 years.
The consequences have been catastrophic as Cairo’s mountainous waste piles continue to build up, raising the threat of infectious disease along with numerous other health hazards.
The Roots of Cairo’s Sanitation Crisis
According to experts, Cairo’s chronic garbage crisis stems from three specific policy-related issues, the first two being the advent of multinational companies in 2003 to manage municipal waste and the culling of Egypt’s pigs in 2009 with the ostensible aim of halting the spread of the so-called ‘swine flu.’
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“The problem first began with the government’s decision to contract foreign companies to do our job, even though we know the garbage system better than anyone,” said Naem.
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The multinational firms use a different system than do the Zabaleen, collecting rubbish from garbage bins that they have set up in various central Cairo collection points. Many Cairo residents have, however, voiced their discontent with this system, claiming there were an insufficient number of bins and these were often inconveniently located.
In addition, the new system is more costly as residents have to pay a separate monthly bill for garbage collection that accompanies their electricity bill, which already includes a service premium. Most therefore prefer the door-to-door garbage service provided by the Zabaleen, which is more appropriate to Cairo’s municipal waste context.
Conversely, the Zabaleen’s traditional system involves transporting garbage directly from Cairo residents to their quarters in ‘garbage city,’ or Cairo’s Moqattam. In garbage city, where around 30,000 inhabitants live and work among towering stacks of foul-smelling rubbish, the garbage is sorted and either resold or recycled.
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According to local inhabitants and experts, living conditions for Zabaleen have not seen any improvements since the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and President Morsi assumed power. The people still lack basic amenities, such as clean water, sewage, and health and education services.
Irrefutably, the introduction of multinationals in the management of municipal solid waste (MSW) had an immediate negative effect on Egypt’s already impoverished Zabaleen community. For one, they lost access to a large proportion of garbage, which they rely on for their economic survival, forcing some to work with the multinationals.
Although most Zabaleen identify the great damage caused by the foreign companies’ to their trade, they maintain that the biggest catastrophe was the culling of Egypt’s pigs in 2009 in response to the much-hyped H1N1 flu pandemic. The pigs had played a vital role in the garbage elimination process, eating much of the collected organic waste. When sold, the pigs also provided a profitable income and had been a main source of protein for the Zabaleen.
“The bottom line is that pigs aren’t welcome in Egypt,” said Samaan Ibrahim, a priest from the predominantly Coptic-Christian Zabaleen community.
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