What ‘garbage hills’ teach us about corrupt politicians

I live in a community in Quezon City where garbage is collected twice a week. There is a common area where members of the community may drop household waste at a certain time of day when garbage is to be collected. There I noticed that more and more children and young people are scavenging the piles of garbage for plastic wares, bottles, plastic cardboards, papers, newspapers and other items that can be recycled and resold to junk shops.

One time I saw a  boy, maybe about 10 years old,  shoveling  stuff from  a sack of trash.  I asked him what he was looking for as I was about to hand him the empty plastic bottles and cans I had segregated the night before. He looked at me, and I gazed back at his face. He was so innocent and  pure, reminding me of my Sunday School students who enjoy their  Saturdays and  Sundays with leisure and with playmates and do not need to work during weekends.  His tiny voice was so soft, “Thank you po,” its tone, oozing with gratefulness, I would never forget.

Poverty and economic woes have human faces. These can be seen among scavengers scouring the streets and “garbage hills”—the principal source of the means they need for their daily survival.

I am thinking of the children who would ritually unpack your garbage bag in order to separate the useful from the nonrecyclable stuff. Here we see innocent human beings living deprived but clean and honest lives out of rubbish; while their leaders, the powers-that-be, and their collaborators drawing from the filth of corruption, get to enrich themselves, live in mansions, wallow in luxury and wear neat and spotless attire. They are  too privileged such that, even if jailed, they get good and expensive medical treatment.

Environmentalists are campaigning  for waste segregation. This is good practice that should help people acquire the skill and acuity to differentiate between trash and recyclables. Perhaps, also to see through between the truth and a lie, between justice and injustice, between the rightful exercise of a right and abuse of power.

Waste segregation is, in fact, an act of kindness. It lessens the scavengers’ job of finding what could be useful to them. But trash has to be  thrown into the fire so that it can be of use for some other purpose. Like the thieves and plunderers in government; these are trash, they too need to be thrown into the “fire” of  accountability to clean up the contaminated system.

—NORMA P. DOLLAGA,

Kapatirang Simbahan

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