A participação dos catadores de resíduos sólidos na gestão pública no município de Funilândia-MG

Abstract

Solid waste management is a major challenge for the municipal administration of municipalities. It is notorious the conflict of interests between businessmen of the branch, recyclable waste pickers and collectors' cooperatives, which directly affect the economy and public health of the population. In Brazil, unfortunately, solid wastes are not properly collected and are usually destined for city dumps. In this environment, informal workers interested in the collection of recyclable materials end up. Within this theme, this work sought to understand the work of solid waste pickers in the city of Funilândia-MG and its indirect contribution to the public management of solid waste. For that, a field research, of a descriptive nature and qualitative approach was carried out with five collectors who work in the Funilândia-MG dump, through observation and questionnaire applied to each of them. The results revealed that the scavengers suffer from precarious and unhealthy conditions of work, in addition to being forced to live with prejudice and social exclusion. Thus, it is necessary for the municipality to implement actions aimed at improving the quality of life of waste pickers through the provision of Personal Protection Equipment to minimize the risk of accidents and social support in order to reduce the social exclusion of this group of workers.