Decentralisation key to ensuring women’s participation in waste management

NEW DELHI: The report titled ‘Santulan: Path to Equality for Women Wastepickers in India,’ was jointly released by a waste management NGO Chintan and The Incubation Network on Tuesday, January 17. It shows that decentralisation is necessary to ensure participation of women in the waste management sector.

The survey tracked 24 participants over eight months, from April to November 2022. The report highlighted that 80 per cent of female waste workers take around 30 minutes to reach their workplace. Apart from that, 75 per cent of the women workers travel on foot to their workplace compared to their male counterparts, amongst whom this percentage is only 42 per cent.

Four waste pickers, two male and two female, worked in the government-owned micro-material recovery facilities (MRF) as ‘main participants’. Additionally, a control group of 20 waste pickers were also identified in the south Delhi jurisdiction of the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC).

The study also found that women working in the MRF facilities were earning more than women outside these facilities. Women working in the MRF facility had a household income of over ₹25,000 per month, while women part of the control group or working outside had a household income below ₹15,000 a month.

The report added, “None of the control group women have a household income above ₹20,000. It was also found that a hundred per cent of the MRF women earn above ₹2,000 per week for plastics, whereas 80 per cent of the control group women earn below ₹2,000 per week. Thus, a positive correlation is seen between having space (such as micro-MRF or a dry waste collection centre) and improved incomes.”

Shruti Sinha of Chintan, one of the key researchers engaged in the study, highlighted that this study established a clear connection between female waste workers working inside a well-defined space are earning better than those women who do not work in a defined space.