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Rubbish collectors no longer find the remnants of expensive food, empty cans, or packages of famous brands. (Photo by Ahmed Mourad)
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CAIRO — The global financial crisis that has hit almost every corner of the world is taking its toll on the Egyptian economy, revealing itself from even Egyptians' garbage.
"I can tell the condition of the economy easily from the rubbish I collect everyday," Gamal Salam, a rubbish collector, told IslamOnline.net.
He wakes up at 5:00 a.m. everyday and scours the streets and the houses of the capital Cairo for almost every unwanted object.
He then takes all the refuse to Manshiyet Naser, a shanty area east of Cairo, to classify it to see what can be sold and what can be burned or thrown away.
"Egyptians’ rubbish at the beginning of any month is, for example, different from their rubbish in the middle or towards the end," explains Salam, 26.
The same theory is guiding him to know Egypt’s economic condition at present.
He no longer finds the remnants of expensive food, empty cans, or the plastic bottles and packages of famous brands.
"These days, when we bring the garbage here, we scarcely find anything to sell or even recycle."
A recent survey of the companies working in the Middle East showed that Egypt would be among the countries hard hit by the financial crisis.
But Egypt is already so beset by its own economic problems that the global crisis may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Increasing pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia are scarring shippers away from the Suez Canal, Egypt’s third source of foreign currency revenues after tourism and remittances.
The canal earned a record $5.2 billion last year.
Although foreign direct investment have risen to a record $11.1 billion in the last fiscal year and unemployment has fallen officially to around 9 percent, absolute poverty rates have increased from 16.7 to 19.6 percent between 2000 and 2005, according to World Bank figures.
An assessment in June found that one in every five Egyptians cannot meet their basic living needs.
And the financial crisis seems to be making the lives of the most vulnerable segments in the Egyptian society even harder.
Hard Times
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| People who live on garbage collection or classification, once a good-paying job, are feeling the economic crisis heat. (Photo by Ahmed Mourad) |
Coupled with an inflation, which peaked at 12.8 percent in March before falling to around 8 percent, the financial crisis is changing the nature of the harvest for rubbish collectors, revealing an acute effect from the chaos in Wall Street.
The heaps of garbage in front of Ali Abdel Hadi seemed to contain all the things he was looking for.
He kept rummaging through the smelly objects, taking the wooden materials to one side and the plastic bags and objects on the other.
But the look on his face lacked the usual gaiety that used to espouse the processing of his day’s harvest of rubbish for the past 40 years.
Hardly does he now find an object that is worth selling in the one tone or so of garbage he collects everyday.
Chicken bones, leftover of beef and the like are fast becoming a rarity.
Neither do the objects he retrieves from the refuse bring him enough money as they used to do.
"This is almost the toughest phase for rubbish collectors," Abdel Hadi, 53, said.
"We’ve been suffering this dry season for months now and the worst seems yet to come."
Abdel Hadi, inherited the job from his father and his grandfather, is one of hundreds of people who have chosen rubbish collection as a job.
They live in what is known as the Rubbish Collectors’ Village, a smelly dump-like space the size of downtown Cairo.
On the streets, refuse, animal muck, and scrap metal are no stranger.
The inhabitants of the village, who all work in rubbish collection or classification, live, eat, and sleep here. They even enjoy the lives they lead in the middle of these putrid objects.
This joy is fast fading away and becoming something of the past with the financial crisis posing a dangerous threat to rubbish collectors.
Abdel Hadi used to earn between LE50 ($9) and LE80 ($14.5) a day. Now he earns LE40 ($7.5) at most.
"Apart from the fact that the refuse no longer has the customary quality, the price of the things we find are no longer the same," he explains.
He used to sell the one kilo of plastic materials for 80 piasters (the one Egyptian pound contains 100 piasters). But now its sells for only half that price.
Abdel Hadi recalls that Chinese traders used to come to the village to buy old scrap metal and plastic to take back to China for recycling and re-manufacturing operations. The Chinese traders, however, are also making themselves scarce.
"I don’t know how long will the crisis continue to hit our job," he says bitterly.
"The sure thing is that most of these rubbish collectors will soon search for another job."
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