Many children in Gaza work full-time doing this kind of job. They tell us that it is exhausting, has no future, and is hardly rewarding.
Akram al-Hadaf is an 18-year-old teenager from the town of Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip.
Like many in his generation, he had to join the workforce to support his family.
Thanks to Israel’s hermetic siege on Gaza, the small region has one of the highest rates of unemployment and poverty in the world.
Akram’s job is to collect and sell plastic to those who are able to recycle them for possible reuse.
He wakes up very early in the morning and spends most of the day visiting Gaza’s many dumping grounds, looking for plastic, which he sells at the end of each day.
Akram told the Palestine Chronicle that his daily income averages about 15 shekels a day (about $4).
Many children in Gaza work full-time doing this kind of job. They tell us that it is exhausting, has no future, and is hardly rewarding.
However, it is enough, they say, to put food on the table.
Gaza’s poverty has historically been linked to the Israeli occupation.
The last twenty years, however, have been particularly difficult, as Israel has imposed a very tight siege on Gaza.
That, and the repeated Israeli wars, have made life in Gaza very difficult, if at all bearable.
Akram and his friends, however, have no other option but to do whatever they can to ensure the very survival of their families.
(All Photos: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)
