Unidentified Population of India

Rag Pickers: Unrecognized and unidentified population of Ghaziabad

Rag Picker or Chiffonnier is defined as a person who makes earning by rummaging through refuse in streets to collect material for salvage.

This population is serving the humanity by removing the daily chores and wastes from the houses and streets. This workforce thus help to remove over 62 million tonnes of waste annually in terms of plastic, paper, hospital waste, e-waste etc.

This unorganized waste makes them highly vulnerable to various communicable diseases like skin diseases, diarrhea, pneumonia, heavy metal poisoning, needle prick injuries etc.

It has been estimated that this section of the society is constituting more than 1.5 million to 4 million workers across the country, though there is no identification provided to them in the present Urban plan by the Government of India.

We at World Without Obstacles along with Kiran Trust Foundation visited such a vulnerable population in an urban slum of Ghaziabad, where the scenario was even worst. The waste was littered all around rendering no space to walk, in the name of school a room was allotted with a broken chair and no arrangement for sitting of the children.

Health condition was even worse with no near by health center providing health care and the poverty in this group further render them from acquiring health services outside their allocated location.

We envisages to provide health services in future, the date and time of the same will be shared soon.

The last decade has seen unregulated growth of urban slums. This rapid rise is attributed to increased migration from rural sectors to urban sectors, from towns to cities and from countries to countries. This population spurt of cities has further raised the demand of basic infrastructure leading to tremendous rise of constructions.

Delhi NCR including Delhi, Ghaziabad, Noida, Gurgaon and Faridabad are the hub of such rapid rise in urbanization along with construction. The high rise building hubs in Ghaziabad, Noida, Gurgaon and Faridabad accomodation more than 10 lakh of migrant labour working to earn their livelihood.

These labour are like nomads with no particular address and no registered area under government urban plans. Being the unidentified population in the society they are devoid of all government policies and programs.

The biggest challenge for such migrant workers is of health and education of their children. Many researches had been done in past and are being conducted to find the challenges this section of society is facing. One major challenge in terms of health that was observed was that of out of reach appropriate health facility.

In order to provide that services we as a team from World Without obstacles in collaboration with Kiran Trust Foundation organized a health check up camp to understand the needs of this section of the society.

In this post we are some glimpses of the event.

In our next post will share some results.