Migrant Workers Children Spend Childhood Scavenging Landfill

by Fauna on Wednesday, August 24, 2011144comments

Guiyang migrant worker children spend their days scavenging garbage dumps

Guiyang Gaoyan Garbage Landfill, is Guizhou province’s first and largest municipal landfill. Around it live over a hundred migrant worker households who scavenge the garbage for a living. It is on these garbage heaps that the children of these migrant workers spend their childhood.

A three-member family that lives here, who spend 8 hours every day scavenging from the garbage, their income only 700-800 yuan every month, only enough to maintain the lowest standard of living. So the children here, as small as six to seven years old, all spend their time outside of school following the adults in scavenging on the garbage piles for “treasures” that can be recycled or sold, to reduce the financial burden in their households.

During the school year, they will work at the garbage dump from when school is out until eight or nine at night before going home. During the summer break, the older children will enter the garbage dump at dusk and work until the next morning before leaving. Photo is of a child scavenging in the garbage dump.

In order to save on rent, the families here often live four to five people in a 10-something square meter house, with the empty space being piled full of garbage. Without any disinfectant measures and long-term exposure to garbage has greatly increased the chances of the children suffering infectious diseases. Photo is of several children sitting on a salvaged sofa.

These children live on the city’s fringes, in bad living conditions, with extremely poor family situations, usually entering school very late, some only entering school at 11-12 years of age, while others don’t even have the opportunity to go to school at all. Due to the lack of education and life skills, of these children who spend their childhood years growing up in the garbage dump, some have already dropped out of school while others have already “taken the occupation of their fathers”. Photo is of a small girl doing her homework beside a pile of garbage bags near the entrance to her home.

A child sleeping on her mother’s back. Due to not having anyone to take care of them, some children spend their days on their mothers’ backs in the garbage dump from the moment they are born.

Photo is of a mother taking three children to go scavenge garbage.

Photo is of several children playing in front of her home.