Coronavirus update- A waste collector’s tale: ‘These days, people look at me as if I’ve got a disease’

While the coronavirus pandemic has forced people to stay at home, Manoj Pal, a waste collecter, has been going about his duties like nothing had changed—by 12.30pm he needs to get back to the EDMC and head to the landfill.

On Tuesday evening when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the 21-day lockdown to control the spread of Covid-19, 37-year-old Manoj Pal, a contract staff with East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC), sat listening intently in front of his second-hand television set with his wife and three children.

A waste collector in Delhi says from the news, he knows that the coronavirus came from those who are rich enough to travel to foreign countries. (HT Photo)

The next day, at dawn, he cycled to report for duty and spent the rest of the day collecting garbage from neighbourhoods around east Delhi, segregating it and finally disposing of it.

Friday was no different. By 8 am, Pal reached his contractor’s office at Patparganj industrial area, signed on the daily register and then proceeded to the EDMC office a kilometre away to board the tipper truck assigned to him. By 9 am, he has to report to the first colony in Patparganj.

While the pandemic has forced people to stay at home, Pal has been going about his duties like nothing had changed—by 12.30pm he needs to get back to the EDMC and head to the landfill. He says that till two days ago, he did not even have gloves, a mask or boots to do his job. On Thursday, his contractor gave him a pair of used rubber gloves and a flimsy mask as his battle armour.

“What has changed is the attitude of people and the way they look at me these days, as if I am diseased,” Pal says, snapping at his torn gloves.

After a moment of thought, he adds, “Saying this means a lot because waste collectors like me face a lot of discrimination even on regular days.”

Between his daily trip of collecting trash from neighbourhoods to reaching the landfill, he gets a half-hour gap for lunch. Out of this time, he takes 15 minutes to eat the food that his wife packed and then calls back home to check on his family.

For the last one week, in many gated neighbourhoods, residents either come to the gate to dispose of their garbage, or a worker from the colony collects it from each house and dumps it into Pal’s van.

While residents from these colonies hand over their waste, most of them have carefully covered their mouths with masks or with some cloth. People are also careful to not touch his hand in any way and some do not even wait to get home to wash their hands and immediately rub sanitiser over their hands with a cringed face right in front of him.

“Looking at the news I know that the virus came from those who are rich enough to travel to foreign countries. So technically, I should run the other way,” he laughs.

Pal says that in the zone assigned to him, he has got a list of four houses where people are under home quarantine by the directions of authorities. He is tasked with lifting waste from these houses every alternate day.

“There is a separate truck that has been assigned to collect garbage from these houses,” he says.

Work becomes more intense as the day progresses. Wiping his brow, as he empties out black garbage bags from his van to a garbage dump near Ghazipur landfill, around 3 pm on Friday, he lifts out two masks that he found in the pile, “You can find these a lot in the garbage dumps these days. This could be of someone who has symptoms, who know.”

By 5.30 pm after wrapping up work, he usually sticks around for some time to have a cup of tea with his colleagues before he heads home. However, since his children are home these days because of the lockdown, he has been heading home.

At 6 pm he is home.

“I fear for my children. Before entering home these days, I just rub some ash mixed with water and get rid of all the dirt. If you are destined to die of a disease, even the Gods can’t save you,” he says.

The next few hours go in playing with his children and listening to his wife complain about how they kept her on her toes all day. His family has made it a tradition for everyone to sit together for dinner at 9 pm.

“The day is usually so long that I crash by 10.30 pm after watching some funny videos on my mobile,” he says, preparing for the same routine the next day.