Dakar (AFP)

It is a small world on borrowed time, that of the plastic and metal “reclaimers” of the huge Mbeubeuss landfill, at the gates of Dakar.

A recycling center should be set up there in four years, threatening thousands of jobs.

For now, many of them are still walking the trash-strewn ground and picking up bottles and other plastic waste with hooked sticks, among cows and hundreds of looking birds. of their pittance.

The smell is rancid and the heat intense on this mountain of multicolored waste in the shape of a volcano that the collectors nickname "Yemen".

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Dump trucks regularly come to dump new loads, causing a rush of waste pickers, always on the lookout for the best parts.

"Everyone gets rich here," said Laye Niaye, a security guard, watching men, women and children wade through the garbage.

Dakar, a constantly growing capital of more than three million inhabitants, produces thousands of tonnes of waste every year, most of which ends up in Mbeubeuss, about thirty kilometers from the center of Dakar.

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The landfill has a reputation for being a major source of pollution.

Among the nuisances: the noxious fumes which escape from the braziers lit to isolate metals and which invade neighboring residential areas.

The landfill is so large - around 115 hectares - that it's hard to control what's going on there.

Informal villages have even sprung up there.

- Courage and determination -

After decades of chaotic management, the Senegalese government plans to transform the open dump into a recycling and waste recovery unit by 2025.

But this project threatens the flourishing informal economy that has developed there.

It is estimated at 2,000 the number of people who, ignoring the stench and toxic fumes, earn more or less a living there.

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To get out of it properly, "you have to be tough, courageous, determined," says Mouhamadou Wade, a fifty-something lean and muscular body who has spent the last 30 years working on the landfill.

Like many others here, he takes a dim view of the sorting center project.

If it is dangerous and dirty, the work on the landfill can pay off for the best.

According to a study carried out in 2018 by the NGO Wiego on informal employment for women, a quarter of waste pickers in Mbeubeuss earn more than 100,000 CFA francs per month (152 euros), or nearly twice the minimum wage in Senegal.

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Some earn double, and others much less.

Waste pickers sell the recyclable materials they collect to wholesalers, who in turn resell them to specialized companies.

Souleiman Diallo, 40, is loading big plastic bales into the back of a trader's truck.

"It's very difficult, but there is no work" elsewhere, he said.

- 'Always losers' -

Pape Ndiaye, 66, spokesperson for the association of waste pickers, believes that the activity contributes to "protect the environment", but that with prices that have stagnated for 20 years (the kilo of plastic is still worth 75 francs CFA, or 11 euro cents), it is the intermediaries who benefit, while "the waste pickers are always the losers".

The landfill is placed under the supervision of the Solid Waste Management Coordination Unit (UCG).

For his manager on site, Abdou Dieng, the main concerns are fires and smoke.

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Suddenly he gets angry when he sees fumaroles rising from a corner of the landfill recently covered with gravel and sand, a sign that someone has started a new blaze.

"As soon as I get my hands on him, I will create a lot of problems for him," promises the young man, sent a year ago because the residents "revolted" against the nuisances.

According to Maguette Diop, from the NGO Wiego, the control of fires by UCG staff has already reduced the number of diseases in the neighborhood.

In June, President Macky Sall promised assistance to waste pickers who will lose their source of income with the arrival of the sorting center.

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But according to Mouhamadou Wade, the veteran of the dump, no one is really reassured.

"We don't know what tomorrow will bring," he sighs.

© 2021 AFP