By: Casey Williams, Burma
Issues.org
Along the Thai-Burma border the
rubbish dump of Mae Sot, Thailand has become a refuge for many migrant families
from Burma. Approximately sixteen houses, constructed from bamboo and plastic
materials currently exist at the rubbish dump. Living conditions are bleak for
many families at Mae Sot’s rubbish dump with lack of access to basic needs and
services, such as clean water and medical facilities.
In response, organizations such
as the The Best Friend have sought to transform the living conditions for many
of the migrant families living at the rubbish dump. The Best Friend project
started as a collaborative effort of two socially active monks from Burma.
Growing up under the ruthless military regime and witnessing horrendous
atrocities committed by Burma’s ruling government, Ashin Sopaka and “King Zero”
set out to establish an organization that will provide a voice for people to
communicate their struggles with world. Although primarily focused on education
related initiatives, in 2007 the activities of The Best Friend project expanded
to include work with people from Mae Sot’s Rubbish Dump.
The main role of The Best Friend
project is to provide basic services to migrants living at the rubbish dump.
Organizers supply medicine to individuals who cannot go into town for medical
treatment and distribute food to families at the dumpsite. Organizers also
provide opportunities for families at the rubbish dump to send their children
to school, by linking them with local migrant schools in the surrounding Mae
Sot area. Additionally, organizers assist migrant families to relocate from the
Rubbish Dump into better living situations.
The residents at the dump site
are ethnically diverse from various regions inside Burma. Although coming from
different backgrounds these individuals share common hardships of living in
Burma. According to co-founder “King Zero” many people inside Burma do not earn
sufficient income to meet the basic needs for their survival. Even though
individuals work long and arduous hours, often times from dawn to dusk, they
receive as little as 1 U.S. dollar in return, which is not nearly enough money
for workers to support themselves and their families. The lack of opportunities
and long working hours with little compensation in exchange has forced many
individuals and families to flee Burma with the hope of better life
opportunities in neighbouring Thailand.
Although the length of stay
varies among migrant families at the rubbish dump, typically families stay
anywhere from 6 months to one year. According to co-founder “King Zero” the
people at the dumpsite do not choose to live at the dumpsite because of the poor
living conditions and high susceptibility to disease, yet unfortunately many
individuals and families find themselves living on rubbish because of their
limited social network connections in Thailand. When many people leave Burma
they often arrive in Thailand with very little contact to other social groups
that could assist them in finding suitable homes and work. The combination of
not knowing how to connect with the right social network and or the fear of
doing so due to their illegal status severely limits options and forces many
people to resort to living at the rubbish dump.
Although the rubbish dump is not
a healthy environment for inhabitance the site does provide people living there
the opportunity to earn a greater wage than in Burma. Workers at the site can
earn roughly 100 baht (3 U.S. dollars) by collecting recyclable materials at
the rubbish dump. The collected recyclables are often sold to local shops in
Mae Sot and just over the border in Myawaddy, Burma.
Although the rubbish dump
provides a source of income for people living there, working at the site does
come with risk and serious threat to health and security. Migrant workers at
the rubbish dump face serious risks to their health, including skin, chronic
and respiratory diseases, sickness from drinking contaminated water and
nutritional deficiency due to lack of proper food.
Aside from health risks, migrant
workers also face the threat of arrest from Thai authorities. According to
“King Zero”, Thai police raid the rubbish dump sometimes one or two times a
month to arrest and deport illegal Burmese migrants living at the site.
Oftentimes illegal migrants have to flee to neighboring forests and hide or
bribe police officials in order to avoid deportation back to Burma. In the case
of migrant families deported to the Myawaddy, many migrants stay inside Burma
temporarily until sufficient time has passed and it is safe for them to
illegally cross again into Thailand and return to the rubbish dump. According
to “King Zero”, migrant families return to the rubbish dump due to the greater
opportunities they find there in comparison to their hometowns in Burma.
Since the inception of The Best
friend work with the people of the Mae Sot rubbish dump, the organization has
seen some success. Most recently, organizers raised enough money to construct
thicker roofs for families at the rubbish dump. In total, fourteen families
received new roofs to withstand exposure from the weather conditions. Relying
primarily on individual donations, organizers of The Best friend hope to
continue their current initiatives with the migrant families living at the
rubbish dump as well as expand their activities with the construction of a well
to provide clean water.
Wat Tut
Wat Tut is 42 and has lived on
the rubbish site for 4 years. All of his possessions are made of things he has
found around the dump, even the walls of his home and his children’s toys. The
water him and his family drink is from the nearby lake, which is unsanitary and
has given them bouts of diarrhoea.
Wat Tut explains that the body
gets used to drinking and eating in the dump, and that it’s usually when people
have left the dump for a while and returned that they get ill. He says that he
is used to the smell and the situation, and that the children living there are
usually hardier than the adults because if they were born there because they
are acclimatised to the living conditions.
“We survive because of the
rubbish, so we have to live on the dump.” Wat Tut earns around 100 – 120 Baht
per day by collecting rubbish to sell, and has to feed himself and his wife and
3 children with that money. Wat Tut says that beer cans and plastic cups used
to earn 40 Baht per kilo a few years ago, but that the price has dropped to
only 20 Baht per kilo recently, making life even harder for the rubbish
workers. Many more Burmese migrants have moved into the dump in the past couple
of years. Wat Tut says that he understands this, because although he cannot
save any money from working in the dump, at least he and family are not starving
in Burma. He says: “There is no work in Burma. Living in the rubbish dump is
preferable to living in Burma.” He would not want to move into a refugee camp
because he wants to work and support his family. This is often the reason why
people stay in the dump. People live, marry, give birth, bring children up and
die in the dump. Generations of families live there.
There is even a dump school, the
‘Skyblue School’, which Wat Tut’s children attend. Not all children go to
school regularly because they are sometimes needed at home to take care of
their younger siblings while their parents work, or are sent out to work
themselves. If parents have more than one older child the siblings often share
the responsibility of work or babysitting, and will attend school on a
rotational basis.
When asked about the fear of
arrest, Wat Tut tells us that the police come in the middle of the night or the
early morning to arrest people, and so they can take the rubbish bags stacked
outside the worker’s houses. Wat Tut says that workers don’t dare to sleep, and
are always keeping watch for the police. If the police drive to the dump
following a rubbish truck, the workers can run and hide, but if they surprise
them in the night then they can always catch people or receive bribes.
Wat Tut tells us that this year
there has been a noticeable decrease in foreign aid like food, blankets and
plastic sheeting to help the dump workers reinforce their homes against the
weather. They have had some support, but it had been very marginal.
Mia Thein Mia Thein is 29 and has
lived and worked on the rubbish dump in Mae Sot for more than ten years. During
that time she has only returned to her home village in Burma twice. Mia Thein
is five months pregnant with her second child, yet she still works in the
rubbish dump picking through the piles of refuse and bagging up similar items.
She typically earns between 85 – 90 Baht from selling the rubbish on to factory
owners, who then recycle the plastic cups or glass bottles into items they can
sell. Mia Thein’s husband works outside the dump taking jobs on a daily basis,
sometimes farming or in factories. He usually earns between 70 – 80 Baht per
day. The family’s food costs are in the region of 50 – 60 Baht per day. Mia
Thein explains that this could be substantially lower if they could buy staples
like rice in bulk, but that since food is often taken by police when the dump
is raided they can only afford to buy food on a daily basis. Similarly the
police have frequently taken and sold on the bags of rubbish collected by Mia
Thein and the people she works with, so they usually carry the huge sacks of
refuse around with them at all times.
Mia Thein and her family face
arrest on a regular basis. Two months ago she and her sister, brother and
mother were arrested by the police. They were taken back across the border to
Burma, where they had to pay 400 Baht each to the Democratic Karen Buddhist
Army (which has been closely allied with the Burmese Army since 1994), who then
let them back into Thailand. Her and her family therefore save any leftover
money for paying bribes and costs incurred by arrest and deportation.
