RACHEL EVANS and RAY FULCHER visited the Philippines for three weeks in April. Here they describe, in words and pictures, life in Payatas, the largest active rubbish dump in Manila.
The infamous Smoky Mountain proved too much of an embarrassment to government officials and was closed; now Payatas is the main site for dumping. It is a smelly, hot toxic tip, of about 220 hectares. It is home to 200,000 urban poor families.
Women, men and children scavenge the waste from dawn to dusk, collecting cans, plastic, scrap metals, bottles and newspapers to earn 60-70 pesos per day. The minimum needed by a family of six (the average size of a Filipino family), as calculated by the National Economic Development Agency, is 250 pesos per day.
Life is hard in Payatas. Women give birth amidst Manila's refuse, without safe water, electricity or professional help. Wells exist, but it often takes half an hour to 45 minutes to reach them. The smell is hard to bear, but the people of Payatas are accustomed to it.
It is not the smell that is deadly; it is the toxic fumes rising from decomposing plastic, bottles and scrap. People on the scrap heaps die at about 40 years because of these fumes.
Companies require at least high school level education before they hire. Parents in most urban poor communities do not have the money to enrol their children in high school. If you are born in Payatas, you remain there.
The people of Payatas have no safe water, electricity, sewerage or government assistance in job searching. They live in one-room shacks made of cardboard, tin or leftover wooden planks. In some families, sleeping is rotated because the room is not large enough to accommodate all the bodies.
The government is threatening to take even this away from the people. Demolition teams destroy shantytowns with no thought for destroyed lives. In Payatas, the poor are struggling for the right to remain and scavenge. The government has threatened to close the dump by the end of 1994. The local mayor promised the community that he would provide livelihood programs, but the discussions have led to nothing concrete. Seventy-five per cent of the Payatas population directly or indirectly live off the dump.
There are legitimate concerns about the location of the dump. The main water supply for Quezon City and other parts of metro-Manila (catering for about half a million people) is two kilometres from Payatas. In the rainy season, run-off from the dump contaminates the water supply.
The conditions we saw at Payatas were appalling. First World pets live in better conditions than some of the urban poor. The reasons for this kind of poverty? The Philippines has a debt of $36 billion. Two-third of the country's budget goes towards servicing this debt. The second priority of the corrupt Ramos government is military spending.
The World Bank and International Monetary Fund dictate these kind of priorities.
The United States in 1909 imposed "free trade" on the colonised Philippines. This ensured that the Philippine economy remained agriculturally based, a market for US manufactured products.
After the second world war, with the country in ruins, the US agreed to provide aid only if the economy was tied even tighter to US interests. When governments tried to halt the unequal trade relations, the IMF withdrew funding. The US and its economic think-tanks, the IMF and World Bank, have not only the Philippines in debt. Almost every other Third World country has undergone World Bank "structural adjustment programs" which only weaken their economies — and the people.