Deo calls to stop stigma
WASTE Recyclers Fiji Ltd (WRFL) director and CEO Amitesh Deo has called on media organisations, donor agencies and civil society organisation to stop treating informal waste pickers as "disempowered people".
"It is very important to recognise and realise the work that is involved and the kind of commitment and push-back and stigmas that are attached," he said, while speaking at the close of a week-long workshop for 14 female informal waste pickers from Suva and Lautoka which ended in Suva last week.
"Yes, the waste pickers do need support structures, but they are definitely not how some have classified them as very disempowered people."
Mr Deo said there was a need for WRFL, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Department of Environment (DOE) and Fiji Women's Crisis Centre (FWCC to have a workshop with journalists to help them better understand the challenges informal waste pickers faced, and the work they were trying to do to empower them.
"With media organisations, the messages we are giving out, when its framed, it comes out quite differently.
"So a lesson for us also – we feel there is a need for us to take media organisations into a room where we can talk about how, when we project these stories that it does not look like we are trying to disempower groups or add more stigma to it.
"How do we improve it? So that is something we would like to work with FWCC, DOE, IUCN as one of the projects we take on where we get media organisations to get a better understanding of the structure of these groups."
Mr Deo said Waste Recyclers Fiji had worked with the informal waste picking community for the past 28 years and had an intimate knowledge of the challenges they faced.
"So our strategy is going to be very structured in terms of providing empowerment as well as for the recycling industry."