The next time “Mamang Basurero” knocks on your door to collect your trash, he will already be a professional with a license to boot.
How? The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) recently approved two training regulations on garbage-handling courses that would not only teach them the proper and safe way of disposing of wastes, but also give them a sense of pride in what they are doing.
TESDA Director General Joel Villanueva told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in a phone interview, on Monday, that the garbage collection and the sanitary landfill operations courses would become available to the public within the year. Its graduates will have “much pride that they are able to develop their skills” in waste handling, which would increase their dignity at work and may eventually lead to an increase in salary, according to Villanueva.
Currently, garbage collectors in the country are minimum wage earners. With the certification and the opportunity to increase their competencies in the trade, Villanueva said the training program would give the graduates of the two courses the chance to improve their lives as their new credentials could be the “basis for salary increase as well as promotion.”
“Garbage collectors have to deal hands-on with our daily trash. In this thankless job, they make sure wastes get removed from our homes to the landfill. We want to make the job dignified by making it a full-fledged occupation,” Villanueva said in a statement.
Among the lessons to be taught for those who would take up a certification for garbage collection are: sorting and removing unnecessary items; arranging items; implementing mitigation measures to eliminate environmental risks and hazards in the workplace; maintaining tools and equipment; and learning the proper use of gloves, masks, boots or safety shoes, raincoats, safety goggles and reflectorized vest.
For those taking up the sanitary landfill operations course, among the things that will be taught to them by TESDA’s trainers are monitoring leachate production and parking and cleaning of equipment; checking dumped wastes, and overseeing the cleanup of the litter site. Once they graduate and pass the agency’s assessment, they will be called sanitary landfill facility site foreman.
Villanueva told the Inquirer that they decided to offer these courses as a response to the demand of the industry, particularly the Solid Waste Management Association of the Philippines (SWAPP), to professionalize and provide a safer workplace for those working with the country’s wastes. It was also put up as a way to fill in the demand of 5,000 garbage collectors in Metro Manila alone.
SWAPP, according to its website, is a “non-profit membership organization composed of solid waste practitioners from local government units, national government agencies, nongovernment organizations and the academe.”
Villanueva noted that Republic Act No. 9003, or the “Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000,” calls for, among others, skills development along the various areas of collection, transport and dumping of garbage, especially municipal and city waste.
TESDA’s two new courses, whose costing is now being studied by the agency, are its “contribution” to improve solid waste management in the country. The courses will soon be offered at TESDA centers and its accredited schools, according to agency officials.