Aafrin Kidwai 
After a week of lockdown, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has started distributing identification cards to ragpickers, who were not allowed to do their work under the essential services category. The work of collection and segregation of dry waste had come to a halt during the last week.
There are three organisations—Stree Mukti Sanghatana, Aasra and Aakar—under which 6,650 ragpickers report to collect and segregate waste across the city. MidDay reports that after the lockdown, the BMC allowed only essential services to be on. While solid waste management comes under the essential category, the ragpickers couldn’t join in, as they didn’t have any IDs from the municipal corporation. Hence, the work of dry waste segregation was put on hold.
