Life in the Indian cemetery of computers
Categories: Society
By Pictolic https://pictolic.com/article/life-in-the-indian-cemetery-of-computers.htmlCrawling on elbows and knees, working for only $2.5 a day, children and adults earn a living on the largest electronic garbage dump in India. The Silampur e—waste dump is the place where all the old computers, televisions, mobile phones and refrigerators in the country end their lives. It attracts more than 30 thousand people, including children, who come here to look for valuable components in used equipment, such as copper.
Muhammad Hamid, the owner of a scrap metal shop near the landfill, says: "I have been working here for 40 years, extracting copper from used printed circuit boards. My children also work here. They don't go to school, there's no need. They make good money too, and that's all I want." Locals go to the landfill every day to collect fees. Some mine non-ferrous metals separately, while others work with large resellers and earn about 200 rupees ($2.5) a day.
12-year-old Sahil works with his mother in a small scrap metal shop. He says: "I spend nine hours with my mom every day getting copper, lead, aluminum and sometimes gold from old chips. The owner pays my mother 200 rupees."
The earnings of people who work at this dump depend on how many non-ferrous metals they can extract, and on the quality of this metal. Ishtiyak, the owner of a large scrap metal recycling factory in Silampur, says: "There are no fixed prices in this market. If someone has mined gold, we pay him more. That's how things are done. There is a demand for gold and copper. Copper factories, which mainly buy and clean scrap metal, pay substantial sums."
(13 photos in total)
Raashid, a scrap metal collector, poses in the middle of disassembled machinery in a shop near a landfill in Silampur.
Among the garbage there are televisions, computer screens, mobile phones and refrigerators.
Two boys are looking for valuable metals among the garbage that they can sell.
The boy breaks the equipment to check if there is anything valuable inside.
10-year-old Asif looks at small electronic garbage in search of valuable components.
Ramcharan and his friend Harish work in a scrap metal shop after collecting metal from discarded machinery.
Obsolete monitors are displayed at the curb next to the electronic garbage dump, awaiting disassembly for scrap.
Workers unload a trolley with parts from old electronics.
Keywords: Earnings | Cemetery | Computer | Garbage | Child | Landfill
Post News ArticleRecent articles
The celebrities we are used to seeing on the screen or in history textbooks, outside of all this hype around, are ordinary people. ...
At the beginning of their career, many actors grab any role – just to light up on the screen. And then, years later, when they ...
Related articles
In most cultures of the world, it is customary to bury their dead underground, marking the place of burial with a monument or ...
With pain in the back in our days many. Lately, because of the quarantine and transition to remote work, this problem became even ...
The world continues to grapple with the coronavirus, so it is important to remember personal hygiene. Always wash your hands before ...
Arabic writing is very different from Cyrillic and Latin. And this difference is not only in the form of the letters themselves. In ...