24/7 Scrap Yard

In the middle of the Bahraini desert, in the Gulf region, scrap workers recycle all kind of metals and plastic. The only method workable is to do it manually.

10 hours per day for an average of $13, nearly one hundred labourers from Bangladesh and Pakistan dismantle usable parts from trash.

Most of the scrap workers are ‘free visa’. To be able to come to Bahrain they paid an average of $5000 to ‘agents’ in their home country even though Bahraini law forbids charging fees for working visas.

Once in Bahrain, they don’t meet the real sponsor of the visa, neither do they get the job and the salary they had been guaranteed. Indebted, they are compelled to stay and endure precarious working conditions.

The labourers live in the scrap yard itself, in abandoned buses or huts made out of steel. Computer, TV, fridge: they ingeniously manage to improve their living conditions with objects found in the trash.

Far from the city center, they spend their free time in the scrap yard with their co-workers which with time creates a solid solidarity.