Status of Rag Pickers (A Study of Narayanghat Bazaar, Bharatpur, Chitwan, Nepal)

Abstract

Addressing the problems of children rag pickers, various NGOs, INGOs and local club sand other organization are being conducting different program in Nepal .The purpose of organizations are to promote their education level and to provide them different vocational program for their livelihood. But it is still going on. The objective of the study is to observe the status of rag pickers with their daily activities and income. The studies analysis the socio-economic status and demographics characteristics of children rag pickers. There were 90 samples, among of them 70 were boys and 20 girls. Demographic characters included the sex, age and migration status of the respondent. Socio status was measured in terms of literacy rate, education attainment,caste\e then city status, family size and composition and food habit, consumption of drugs and alcohol and habits of spending leasure time.Similarly the economic status was measured in terms of family occupation, working site, rag picking season, rag picking time, daily collection collection materials, place of selling rags, other jobs and daily income.The findings of the study show majority of rags pickers are boys, majority of boys rag pickers are migrant, boys are comparatively literate than girls,majority of rag pickers are from in digenious group,child rag pickers usually originated from non agricultural family with3-5 family members, they come into this job due to family distruction, although they live out of house but they eat cooked food then junk food,they collect mainly plastics and plastics made materials, they get price for their rags varies according to quality of collected materials, they collect rags from market site and dumping site, winter season and morning time is right time to collect rags, smoking and using alcohol is common in rag pickers, besides collecting rags they spend their leasure time by doing different jobs, they select different area for their sleep in night. This study utilized both qualitative and quantitative technique for data collection. There spondent selected by convenience method. Information collected from the children rag pickers under age 16 years old. It is observed that as respondent rag pickers were very vulnerable situation. They needs up port of humanitarian to promote their life style and for their safe future.