 |
|||||||
 www.punescoop.com |
|
|
|||||
|
|||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
Your Friendly ScavengerMen Rescue Hazardous Waste Oil From The Puddles, Pools & Polluted RiversBy Sanjay Sharma, Section Environment 
Scavengers extracting hazardous waste oil rescued from puddles, pools, and rivers. (Devjyoti /CSE) About 10,000 people who scan drains in Delhi?s industrial areas to collect the waste oil floating in the pools, puddles, and rivers, are a vital but neglected work force. Ramkaran, originally from Mau-Aimma village near Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, and now a resident of a slum near Sarita Vihar, New Delhi is such a person. Factories in industrial areas (Sahibabad, Noida, Ghaziabad and Gurgaon on the outskirts of Delhi ? and Okhla within the city) produce humongous amounts of waste oil that flow in open drains ? a lot of it reaches the river Yamuna. Waste oil is a hazardous waste. ?Look, you can see oil floating in the drain,? says Ram Karan. He throws a little pebble into the drain, which makes a small ripple on the oil surface, revealing the dark gray mucky water below.
By the time Ramkaran has finished voicing his fears, five friends of his have gathered near the drain.
Ramkaran does not know that industrial units are not supposed to let waste oil flow through drains; they are supposed to treat it in effluent treatment plants. ?The factory owners say we steal oil,? he says.
(Click on "Full Story" for more.)
When he comes on his round to buy the oil, Ramkaran and his friends have three drums of oil ready. When The oil is finally measured: the contract reckons it is 640 litres; Ramkaran and his friends protest again: the product of their month?s toil is nothing less than 670 litres, they implore.
Ramkaran and his friends distribute the amount amongst themselves ? each gets less than Rs 1,000 for the product of their month?s work. The members of this sorry brigade can be identified quite easily by their trademark jerry cans that jangle along on both sides of their bicycles as they pedal towards drains. From Down To Earth - Look, oil
Your Friendly ScavengerMen Rescue Hazardous Waste Oil From The Puddles, Pools & Polluted Rivers | 0 comments (0 topical, 0 hidden)
|
