The government departments and ministries in Fiji have control over garbage collection, cartage, and disposal, and provide licences and approvals for disposal at the approved dump sites.
These are the Department of Environment and the Central Board of Health under the Ministry of Health.
On the other hand, all local councils are regulatory bodies to ensure the safe collection and disposal of solid and liquid wastes from premises are collected and disposed safely.
Under section 4, part 2 of the Environment Management Act 2007 permits, licenses, and approvals are required.
The reason is to ensure environmental protection and control of pollution from waste either on land or water as part of the ecosystems.
Street sweepers are part of sanitation workers and have been employed since the 18th century to clean streets using simple tools such as brooms, shovels, and spades in towns and cities.
In those days’ animals such as dogs, horses, and bullocks were also brought to the towns.
It was necessary to remove the waste. Eventually, the modernisation of machines changed a lot over a few centuries.
There are categories of employees hired or contracted by municipal councils in Fiji to sweep streets, collect garbage, and rake streets and alleys.
They are unprotected against intense heat, rain, dust, traffic risks, and other hazardous environmental conditions. Most of them work the whole day say 7-9 hours for six days.
They use various tools and equipment such as knives, forks, spades, shovels, rakes, brushes, wheelbarrows, push carts, and other machines.
They are assigned to work in the respective areas to ensure works assigned are cleaned to the required standards.
Many workers have been hourly paid employees and the work is supervised by the superiors.
There are key areas to ensure regular cleanliness including; the market, bus station, main street, central business district, and other critical locations.
A section that looks after beautification and ensures ornamental trees, flowers, and general landscape are planted with greenery and enhance good looks.
When collecting garbage bins, the crews while standing at the rear of the moving truck, jump off to remove garbage pans from road side.
Few assemble the bins at random places for the convenience of garbage truck to park safely and avoid accidents.
The crews have to run and throw plastic bins few meters into the high-powered automatic garbage truck.
The truck is well-designed to prevent smell, leakage-prof metal cylindrical container, and avoid dust from escaping despite containing assorted specks of dirt and partly decomposed garbage laden inside.
In addition, they have to meet the quota to complete the task within a specified time limit. Some councils collect garbage between 2-3 days per week.
The days of collection may vary depending on normal collecting days allocated, and revised days as residents are informed especially during public holidays.
When the truck is full, the truckload of waste is discharged at a dump site a few kilometers away. These workers are exposed to a high level of stench often and dust particles.
Other immanent risks are levels of noise and risks of hands entrapping by the hydrologic-controlled lid.
High risks of standing long hours which may affect their limb and other parts. The risks of getting the infection from wearing safety boots and hand gloves yet sustaining damage from nails and other sharp objects. Many workers do not use appropriate safety guards despite these being provided.
Garbage bins
There are arbitrary laws regarding the weight of garbage to be disposed of in a garbage bin or into a plastic bag. It may vary from 3 -5 kg on average. It means all garbage placed on the roadside is heaved into a moving garbage truck regularly. In the Greater Suva Urban areas which include (Nausori, Nasinu, Lami, and Suva) a total of 3350 tons of garbage is collected monthly from these areas and deposited at the Naboro Landfill Site, according to UN Habitat, 2012. This adds up to 40,200 tonnes annually, as well as the growth of the urban population by 0.09 per cent. The number of bins increases as new flats are added and extra bins are required. There may be a lack of inventories on such updated data.
High risks of accidents and diseases – statistics
The Ministry of Health collates annual reports on workplace injuries known as Fiji Injury Surveillance in Hospitals (FISH) to investigate the incidence of cases of fatal and hospitalised injuries among adults in Fiji (Ravi et al., 2013). However, the Workman Compensation Act, Cap 94 Part II, has the legal provisions of remedying issues paid as compensations arising from workplace accidents in the courts. There is insufficient data on accidents or sicknesses from appropriate agencies arising from exposures from work attributed to all categories of workers employed by the municipalities such as attendants, managing washrooms/lavatories, cutting grass using machines, or hands, and removing silts from clogged drains. Some are also employed at dump sites to manage the solid wastes. The dump sites cater to other wastes including medical and assorted wastes from other sectors. Their livelihood from the workplace environment may be aggravated by long-term exposures. According to the International Labour Organization (November 26, 2023), nearly three million workers die every year due to work-related accidents and diseases, an increase of more than 5 per cent compared with 2015. The toll emphasises the persistent measures in safeguarding the health and safety of workers, globally. In addition, ILO further estimates that 160 million cases of non-fatal workrelated diseases occur annually. These statistics imply that every day approximately 6400 people die globally, from occupational accidents or diseases and that 860,000 people are injured on the job. Furthermore, estimates show, that work-related diseases represent the main cause of deaths at work sites, killing almost six times more workers than occupational accidents. Jeong & Lee, 2015, studied workplace accidents and illnesses in Korea and indicated significant differences in the effect of workers’ length of employment, injured part of the body, accident type, accident agency, and collection process. Results show that most injuries occur among workers in their 50s and older. This study also shows that 51.4 per cent of injuries occur during working hours with 49 employees or fewer elsewhere.
Risks that waste collectors face
Waste collector injuries often happen when workers are hurt seriously after slipping on the ground. The second most prevalent form of injury is falling, which usually happens when workers hang from the rear of the truck during transportation or otherwise slip and fall from the truck. Study results indicate work-related illnesses amongst waste collectors were mostly musculoskeletal conditions due to damaging postures. Most illnesses occurred to the waist/ torso (69.4 per cent) and shoulder/arms (19.4 per cent), waste collection workers have more musculoskeletal illnesses on the waist, knees/feet, and hands. The reason why there are more injuries on Mondays is that it takes a longer time to collect the waste, which has accumulated over the weekend. The workers rush their work and consequently causes more injuries. Additionally, most injuries occur in workers in their 50s and older. Workers’ physical abilities inevitably decline with age, but in addition to these physical changes, there is also mental stress related to aged vision, auditory, and mobile capabilities (Sturman 2003). Occupational accidents and diseases are based on the information available from national statistics, which often are heterogeneous in terms of definitions, data collection methodologies, and quality. As such, they provide more of an approximation of the burden of workrelated accidents and diseases than an accurate assessment.
Remedies
There is a dearth of reliable data which is indispensable for identifying hazardous sectors and occupations that require prioritising and formulating effective legislation, policies, and programs, as well as monitoring the implementation of safety measures. In addition, identifying priorities for setting the right targets toward reducing occupational accidents and diseases, which in turn contribute to the productivity and economic growth of public enterprises. Unfortunately, data on occupational accidents and diseases are not available, but it still represents a widespread problem. Available data may be derived from a wide variety of different sources: social security and insurance institutions, labour inspectorates, occupational health services, health authorities, and regulatory bodies. Furthermore, official reporting requirements frequently do not cover all categories of workers. Diagnosis of occupational diseases requires specific knowledge and experience that are not always adequately available in Fiji and many developing countries. Moreover, in some countries, responsibility for health and safety at work may be split between labour and health ministries, accomplishing data collection and analysis difficult. Furthermore, many occupational diseases, such as occupational cancers, are characterised by long latency periods and are, therefore difficult to recognise until the clinical manifestation of their symptoms. The increased movement of workers to different jobs, their exposures to other duties during their working life, along non-workplace factors associated with the emergence of a disease, can make it difficult to determine the occupational origin. Additionally, some workers may contract a disease in jobs involving exposure to hazardous substances that have not yet been identified as hazardous.
Recommendations
The local authorities or town councils may consider transferring workers to different categories of work on a rational basis. It may isolate those who may be having any medical or health issues and could be identified and the burden of health risks be reduced. This is part of an early precautionary measure for the benefit of a worker. Adequate training shall be provided by the supervisors regularly. In the case of contractual workers (outsourced workers), their employer shall also provide a training program to the satisfaction of the municipality who has hired the company. The rights of workers under laws such as Human Rights, Fiji’s Constitution 2013, Occupational Health and Safety Laws, and other policies are required to safeguard their working conditions and to safeguard the health and welfare of their families. Monitoring the performance of all the workers exposed to high-risk areas is to be done frequently and make assessments of their performances on the days of garbage collection and disposal. Recommendations on improvements are the options to be implemented.
Experiences of the author on sanitary services
The author was employed by the Ministry of Health during 1994-1999 and was responsible for ensuring garbage collection services in Suva and later in Navua sanitary districts were provided. Private contractors were hired to collect garbage say two days a week. All the property owners were required to pay garbage fees and there were lots of problems identified. Among others were manual open lorries with full exposures of garbage and filth emanating wafts of stench. The garbage would also fall on the road and be left unattended. Since the rubbish dump was at Lami, it was easy to do pick-ups a few times a day and cover the vast areas of Suva Sanitary District commencing from Nasinu 4 miles and 8 miles’ bridge at Wainibuku River.
Finally
Since then many changes have been made such as new laws and modern hightech designed heavy-duty trucks that are in use. Maybe modern designed trucks and bins would be required and be placed and be picked up by lorries without any need of many workers.
• KESHWA NAND KRISHNA is a retired FNU lecturer. The views expressed in this article are not necessarily shared by this newspaper.
