Priest rides to the rescue of rag pickers| Cathnews India

Published Date: March 10, 2010

Tags: Divine Word, protest, rag pickers, waste material cleaning

Priest rides to the rescue of rag pickers thumbnail

women scavengers gathered in Indore to submitt the memorandum

A Divine Word priest has come to the rescue of rag pickers who have been threatened by a government move to employ contract laborers to clear waste material in towns.

“Rag pickers eke out a living collecting and selling waste materials. They come from the very bottom of society,” Father George Payatikat, who works among scavengers in Madhya Pradesh, told UCA News today, after he organized more than 500 women engaged in waste disposal to protest the government move.

The priest heads Jan Vikas Kendra (center for people’s development) he started in 2001 in Indore.

The priest says the women’s “very existence” has been threatened after local civil bodies began to engage contract workers in clearing waste material.

The women submitted to Indore municipal commissioner a memorandum addressed to state Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan demanding “a dignified life and sustained livelihood.”

For this, they demanded the permanent right to collect and sell waste material, and permission and facilities to collect waste from houses. They also demanded health and accident insurance as well as residential schools for their children.

Father Payatikat quoted official records saying India has more than 1.5 million rag pickers.

On the Church’s part, his center has helped more than 1,000 women in Indore form self-help groups, a co-operative society with intra-loan facilities and a health insurance cover.

“We also conduct regular health check-up camps for them and their family,” he said. “It is regrettable that no help from the government ever came to them despite the fact that it is the duty of the government to protect every individual.”

Meanwhile, some 500 men and women engaged in a similar profession gathered in the state capital of Bhopal.

Divine Word Father Albinus Kujur, who organized the program, told UCA News that the rag pickers’ contribution to keeping cities clean “is immense.” He regretted however that “neither society nor the government give them their dues.”

The Church, he continued, strongly believes everyone has a right to a dignified life and decided to take up the rag pickers’ cause.

The priest said most scavengers are women. “Their husbands drink and the women are unable to send their children to school,” Father Kujur noted.

The Church also wants the government to set up schools for their children. “Such initiatives,” he said, would help rag pickers stop their children from joining the same job,” he added.

Source: Priest rides to the rescue of rag pickers (UCAN)

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