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Screen grab of the CGTN series on Africa's challenges and successes in the face of the Novel Coronavirus pandemic.
Up to 90-thousand informal recyclers operate around South Africa. However, they were forced to shut down when the lockdown kicked in, and it will be a long wait before they return to the streets. Since their ban from waste picking, they have been struggling to survive.
CGTN'S Julie Scheier filed this report that it has been a bitter pill to swallow for Wastepreneurs founder Godfrey Phakedi.
He had no choice when he closed his recycling site and asked more than a hundred trash collectors to stay at home when South Africa went into lockdown.
Godfrey Phakedi is the Managing Director, Wastepreneurs: "As it stands we are experiencing five weeks without income or anything you relied in before and I think these five weeks have been very tough."
However hisarmy of trash collectors keep Johannesburg’s streets clean and help prevent 80 tons of plastic, paper and cardboard from being dumped in landfills.
"They are important to help us with the environment. Imagine when all these things go into the landfill, and they are important they are feeding their families. As you can see we have got problems with job scarcity, it gives somebody food on the table, for those who don’t have families, for those who don't have luck, who are from a poor family and it helps them a lot,"Phakedi adds.
There are up to 90-thousand trash collectors around South Africa, they collect and trade over 80% of discarded packaging and paper.
The COVID-19 shutdown has robbed them of their livelihoods and they’re eager to start working again.
"We will have training. The training to give each and everyone of them sanitiser, gloves, mask, so that when they go to the bin, you see the bin has been touched by everyone. So they have to sanitise the bin, firstly and then put the mask and go in the bin then they must make the point, they wash their hands, thoroughly. There must be social distancing. We will teach them about that," submits Phakedi.
Our correspondent says, "Recyclers are not part of the industries going back to work when restrictions are eased in May. Their return to the streets depends very much on South Africa flat-lining the COVID-19 curve."
