Iraqi trash collectors risk lives to collect Baghdad's refuse

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Oct 13, 2006 | by Michael Luo New York Times News Service

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Sabah al-Atia sometimes calls home every 10 minutes when he is working to let his wife know he is still alive.

Al-Atia is a trash collector.

In a city where a bomb could be lurking beneath any heap of refuse, and where insurgents are willing to kill to prevent them from being discovered, an occupation that pays only a few dollars a day has become one of the deadliest. Most of the 500 municipal workers who have been killed here since 2005 have been trash collectors, said Naeem al-Kaabi, the city's deputy mayor.

"When we are working, we are working nervously," said al-Atia, 29, who started collecting trash during Saddam Hussein's rule. "We are carrying our souls in our hands."

The danger to trash collectors is at the root of one of the most visible symptoms of collapse in Baghdad. Garbage is ubiquitous, especially in dangerous neighborhoods, blanketing street medians, alleys and vacant lots in stinking, fly-infested quilts. Trash collection has joined a long list of basic services, including electricity, water and sewerage, that have slipped badly in many places since the U.S.-led invasion.

Trash collectors have frequently refused to venture into especially problem-plagued Baghdad neighborhoods where spasms of violence have often been the norm. Or they have dashed in and out when the danger ebbed, hauling away what they could.

Insurgents have taken to hiding their roadside bombs amid the refuse. Trash collectors sometimes stumble upon them and notify the police, but other times they are not so lucky.

To protect the bombs they have set for U.S. and Iraqi convoys, insurgents have killed scores of trash collectors.

"We are afraid," al-Atia said.

Beyond the challenges posed by the violence, the city is woefully ill-equipped to deal with the waste of 6 million people. It has just 380 working trash compacting trucks, compared with 1,200 before the fall of Saddam's government, al-Kaabi said. Most of the vehicles were destroyed or lost in the looting that seized this capital after the invasion. He estimated that Baghdad needed 1,500 garbage trucks.

Usually just one garbage truck, with a driver and a worker, serves 20,000 to 30,000 people, said Satar Jabar, a district council member.

"It is not enough," he said.

The fall of Saddam's government brought freedom, said Ali Hasan, a Mansour District Council member who represents Warshash, a poor neighborhood where trash is a major blight, which some have interpreted to mean, freedom to dispose their trash as they please.

The city government has tried educational campaigns, posters, even seminars in schools and mosques to promote cleanliness. But in certain areas, only an armed presence has helped. Since August, the U.S. military, with its Iraqi counterpart, has been conducting neighborhood sweeps of troubled sections of Baghdad. Once areas are secured, trash removal by Iraqi crews is among the first priorities.

The most recent statistics on the campaign contained a startling figure, alongside others on houses searched and weapons seized: 7,107,536 cubic feet of trash removed.

Contributing: Omar al-Neami, Hosham Hussein, Qais Mizher, Khalid W. Hassan, Khalid al-Ansary.