Dirty work, and dangerous too
Batumi’s Gonio dumpsite sadly qualifies as an unofficially independent ‘city’ where about 150 to 200 people live and work. The dumpsite denizens spend their time picking through the waste and separating various metals, firewood, glass, plastic, household equipment and other items. They then sell these items in out-of-the-way, obscure locations. One could be easily led to think that all these people are actually volunteer, on-site waste separators.
Batumi residents call these people “BOMJs” (a Georgian acronym for “persons without a permanent place of residence”), while dumpsite employees refer to them as to “external persons.” Unlike regular BOMJs or homeless people, most of these people actually have both homes and families, but the dumpsite offers the only means of supporting their dependents.
These are the people most at risk from medical waste. Sadly, they in turn carry the possibility of creating a widespread pandemic. And medical waste isn’t the only thing to worry about: Plastic and glass collected at the dumpsite is also harmful and toxic.
“You have to be very careful doing this kind of work. You can be injured by a syringe or some other sharp thing and contract a disease,” said Manana Khangiladze, who supports herself and three children by rummaging at the dumpsite. “Such a case once happened to me too, and I had to be disinfected. I try to be careful, but what can I do if life demands that I put my health at risk?”
Forty-year-old David Kakhadze comes from the village of Tcharnala of Khelvachauri Rayon (one of Adjara’s four districts. The village is seven kilometres away from the Gonio dumpsite. Kakhdze claims that medical wastes are brought out to the dumpsite two or three times a day and are landfilled by tractor.
“People are driven to this place by need,” Kakhadze said. “This is not a job, but like going to your own grave. Inhaling this air is death itself, but what can a village man do, having no land, no job and no opportunities? I’m a 40-year-old man, and I don’t care about my life. It has no meaning if I can’t give anything to my child. If the baby has nothing to eat, what do I need my health for? Where can I take it, for what price can I sell it, and who will buy it?”
Nodar Kontselidze, a representative from the Department of Environment Protection and Natural Resources of Adjara, claims that the Batumi Municipality made the BOMJs an offer of employment with the city cleaning services, only to be turned down. But the dumpsite will soon be gone anyway. EU experts at work on a programme to manage solid household waste in Adjara see a solution in transporting waste accumulated at the Gonio dumpsite to a new landfill and processing it there. The new landfill arrangement will probably be in Chakvi, in which case the Gonio dumpsite will be closed.
