Lomas de Zamora, province of Buenos Aires, Argentina – broken television. The remains of meals. Plastic bags Suite of garbage. Emilia Torres dodges lots of waste every morning on the way to work.
It doesn’t always look like that. A little over a year ago, the same dirt road as Torres Walks was almost impeccable, the grass mowed, the dirt streets swept. Now, obstacles obstacles sewers, exacerbating a longtime flood problem and potentially affect health.
Torres and other residents blame the waste in El Paredón on government cuts. In February 2024, the national government ended the Trabajo Potcounciaire (empowerment work), a program that subsidized community cleaning.
The administration of President Javier Milei replaced the trabajo potential, which aimed at land workers in permanent jobs, with programs that will be more effective than those managed by local organizations and governments.
However, the change has also eliminated workers and resources from local cleaning cooperatives. Residents like Torres are now sailing in the streets filled with garbage in an area already struggling with nearby polluting industries.
More than 70% of the urban population of Argentina has a daily collection of waste. In popular barrios, unofficial communities that have grown up across the country, waste collection deficiency generates waste accumulation on street corners or vacant terrains. According to a techo report, a non-governmental organization that seeks to improve habitability, more than a third of them are exposed to a micro-bordering dumping ground, while 14% have a dumping ground within 500 meters which seeks to improve habitability.
Local cleanings, led by local cooperatives who used residents, were a welcome solution, but the lack of government funding hampered the El Paredón collective and the loss hit the neighborhood.
“It makes me very upset,” says Torres. “After keeping it clean and how the environment had improved, see all these garbage hurts.”
The Ministry of Human Capital, which finances social programs, refused the request for an interview with Global Press Journal. The ministry offered a press release which said that the trabajo potential had not achieved its objective of creating temporary jobs that led to permanent positions. According to the press release, only 1.3% of the 1.4 million people enrolled throughout Argentina had obtained permanent job.
The government has replaced the Trabajo potenciaire by Volver Al Trabajo, which invites workers to participate in training, job research services and internships organized by the Ministry of Human Capital. The government has also created Acompañamiento Sociale, a program aimed at people over 50 or mothers of four or more minors who offers workshops on education, health, nutrition and rights; training to promote socio-production companies; pension resources; and nutritional assistance.
Participants in the Potciar Trabajo were paid half of the minimum wage for work in their communities and for academic work. Their payments increased regularly, in accordance with the minimum wage, until Milei took office in December 2023. The payment amounts for those participating in the new programs remained the same, even with the cumulative inflation rate of Argentina going to 186% between then and February of this year.
Walter Córdoba, Secretary of Social Protection of the Unión de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras de la Economía Popular, a union which represents the workers unable to enter the labor market, challenges the government’s assertion that the Potentiar Trabajo did not work. Córdoba says that by saying that the program was ineffective, the ministry ignores the jobs generated in cooperatives – jobs that are now lost.
Rocío Rojas has a small store that sells food, snacks, cleaning products and other items in El Paredón. It deplores the end of the local cleaning program.
“We have no place to throw our garbage,” she says. “Many neighbors throw him around the corner here.” She says she had to raise her soil because the drains are blocked with waste and cause floods.
In addition to worrying about lots of garbage cans, residents fear that summer floods can threaten the health and spread of chemical pollution.
In 2019, the authoridad of Cuenca Matanza Riachuelo, the government agency responsible for cleaning the basin on which El Paredón is found, documented high levels of chrome and lead in the ground. They also found residents with enough lead in their blood to need medical care. The floods would probably spread and expose these pollutants.
Even small heaps of waste can be a source of contamination and illness, due to the presence of highly toxic chemicals, explains Jorge Herkovits, researcher and professor of ecology and environmental medicine at the University of Morón.
The authoridad of Cuenca Matanza Riachuelo noted that diarrhea, dermatological conditions, cough and the difficulty of breathing were the most frequently reported health problems in El Paredón. But the agency said that “no association was found between the health problems mentioned and the exposure factors”.
Eva “Pamela” Duarte is a representative of the Mesa of Trabajo y cooperativa Campo unamuno, a group of improvement in the neighborhood. She thinks that more investigation is necessary.
The end of the Potentiary Trabajo changed the street life in El Paredón, known as Duarte. “I used to see people sweep, cut the grass. Now there is no one in the street. ”
The municipality of Lomas de Zamora, where El Paredón is, recognized that the end of the Potentiary Trabajo has caused problems. In mid-2014, he launched Comunidad Lomas Limpia to promote waste collection and street sweeping.
But residents say that these measures are not sufficient.
“Sometimes they come once a week. Sometimes more than a whole week happens, and they don’t come, ”explains Yesica Villafañe, who lived here for eight years. “When the cooperative was there, they cleaned and removed the garbage every day.”