{"id":4308,"date":"2019-08-02T10:53:14","date_gmt":"2019-08-02T07:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=4308"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:27","slug":"as-garbage-piles-up-in-tunisian-cities-waste-pickers-demand-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/08\/02\/as-garbage-piles-up-in-tunisian-cities-waste-pickers-demand-recognition\/","title":{"rendered":"As Garbage Piles Up In Tunisian Cities, Waste Pickers Demand Recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/news.trust.org\/profile\/?id=0033z00002XV4JzAAL\"><strong>Layli\u00a0 Foroudi<\/strong><\/a><strong>\u00a0| Thomson Reuters Foundation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nsystem of plastic recycling in Tunisian cities is largely reliant on an\ninformal workforce of waste pickers, known as barbechas, meaning someone who\nsearches, digs or investigates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And\nlike thousands of other Tunisians who work in the informal sector, barbechas\nlack an official status and lead a precarious life, carrying out their jobs\nwithout workers&#8217; rights or health insurance, say human rights activists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many\nwaste pickers live in poverty, selling the waste they find to middlemen\nrecyclers who then sell it on for a marked-up price to the national waste\ncollection system or, more often, a private recycling factory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;There\nis no legal framework that regulates (this type of) recycling,&#8221; said Mehdi\nBarhoumi, Tunis-based project manager for the British Non-profit International\nAlert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This\ncould change with a proposed law to establish a &#8220;social and solidarity\neconomy&#8221; which would support collectives and self-governed businesses that\nboth make a profit and have a social objective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nidea is to create a halfway house between the informal sector and regular\nemployment by giving workers the opportunity to self-organise and register\ntheir activity without setting up a company, Barhoumi explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He\nhopes the law will give Tunisia&#8217;s waste pickers better protection from health\nrisks and exploitation by middlemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For\nnow, the law, which was proposed by Tunisia&#8217;s UGTT union in 2016 and finalised\na year ago, is still waiting to be debated by parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But\nthe need for it is only becoming more urgent, Barhoumi stressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The\nnumber of barbechas has not stopped rising, because there is an unemployment\nproblem (and) at the same time, there is a problem with waste management,&#8221;\nhe said. <a href=\"http:\/\/news.trust.org\/item\/20190731233835-odhl6\/\">Read more\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By\u00a0Layli\u00a0 Foroudi\u00a0| Thomson Reuters Foundation The system of plastic recycling in Tunisian cities is largely reliant on an informal workforce of waste pickers, known as barbechas, meaning someone who searches,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}