Zabaleen district in Cairo .. From the piles of garbage are extracted gold

Ahmed Hassan - Cairo

With rough hands covered with gold bracelets that shimmer under a dirty coat, the sarin or mina produces solid waste, brought by trucks from different parts of Greater Cairo.

This repeated scene daily, according to the Egyptian lady of Al Jazeera Net, routinely prepares hundreds of thousands of workers in the recycling and garbage collection in the Zabalain neighborhood near the prestigious Mokattam suburb of Cairo.

From afar, the workers of garbage collection and recycling in that spot, the extreme poverty because of their worn clothes, but the expensive gold jewelery and mobile phones that they own and their homes covered by piles of garbage reveal another aspect of the lives of thousands of rich simple people.

The head of garbage collection workers Shehata al-Maqdis, in an interview with Al-Jazeera Net, estimates that the number of workers in this profession in Cairo is about one million people, besides 3 million distributed in the rest of the provinces.

According to Al Jazeera Net, Christians control a large proportion of the collection, sorting and recycling of garbage in the Zabaline neighborhood, while the holy pointed out that most of them migrated from Upper Egypt in the fifties and sixties of the last century to that neighborhood.

Workers in Al-Zabaleen district of Cairo alone raise 16,000 tons of garbage from residential units, tourism and government facilities in Cairo. The waste of streets and markets is the responsibility of the General Authority for Hygiene and Beautification and local councils in the governorates.

recycling
This includes 8,000 tons of solid materials consisting of recycled glass, cardboard, plastics and aluminum, to provide the state with millions of dollars of imported solid materials from abroad.

In addition, there are 6,000 tons of food leftovers, most of which are canned foods used to feed pigs, along with another 2000 tons of non-recyclable diapers, buried in public dumps in the governorates.

Garbage recycling plants are located in Zabalain district, including bags and plastic containers, such as bottles of perfume, wine, soft drinks and cardboard.

Most of the workers in the recycling profession fear the press. They are vehemently opposed to anyone holding a camera near them, partly because of fear of being spotted by the tax authority and others associated with the reluctance to photograph women during their work.

As part of efforts to normalize their situation, after the revolution of January 25, 2011, the Zabalin syndicate, which is currently employing 100,000 workers, according to their captain Shehata,

The union is seeking to establish understandings with the Egyptian government and integrate and contract with them instead of bringing in foreign companies from abroad.