The Bone Collectors

For most people of Rony’s age, Eid-ul-Azha is an opportunity to spend some leisurely time with friends and family, and feast on various preparations of beef and mutton. But for the 25-year old resident of Bhashantek slum in Mirpur, it is a day of hard work that can earn him several weeks’ worth of income.

Most parts of a sacrificial animal are of use to the general people -- from the tongue to the tail. But one body part that everyone throws away is the skull and jawbones. And that is what Rony, and hundreds of other scrap collectors like him, look to collect every Eid-ul-Azha from across the capital.

The bones go to scrap shop owners, which are then sold off to factories and used in production of melamine resin to make kitchen utensils etc.

Rony, who has been an Eid-day “bone collector” for a few years, received a van and Tk 2,000 from a scrap shop owner for the day’s work, with a target of collecting 1,000kg of bones. Each kg of bone fetches him Tk 6, although around 20 percent of the weight is subtracted during payment because of attached skin and flesh that would have to be removed before processing it.

“I targeted large apartment buildings, because you can get seven to eight cow heads at once,” Rony told this correspondent at Mirpur-14 on the afternoon of Eid. Each head weighs between three to five kg depending on size, he said, adding that he would collect 200-300kg at once in his sack at once, drop them off at the shop, and head out for more.

By 8pm, Rony’s earning for the day rang up to Tk 5,500, he said over phone.

While collecting donated meat from door to door and selling them is also an option, there is a lot more competition in that as it is the more obvious choice, said some others engaged in collecting bones.

Shohag, another teenager who was collecting bones near Kazipara, was making the best of both. “Many of the butchers working on Eid day are not professionals -- most of them are in fact rickshaw pullers. So, often they cannot neatly remove the meat from the head before throwing it away,” he said. 

Shohag kept a small blade while collecting the heads, and scraped off additional meat whenever he could. In front of this correspondent, he sold nearly a kg of that meat for Tk 300.

“It takes up some time to do this, and maybe I will not be able to collect as many heads as someone else. But that’s okay,” he told this correspondent.

Rokon Mia, owner of Sabina Enterprise – a scrap shop owner in Mirpur-14, said he had assigned 12 scrap collectors to collect bones on Eid day, who brought back nearly 3,000kg of bones. “I managed to collect nearly double the amount last year; this year has not been that good,” he said.

Some 15 scrap shops on the same road had all contacted scrap collectors beforehand to gather bones, Rokon said, adding that they paid the experienced ones some money in advance, while others get paid after they bring back their haul.

Asked where these go, he said his clients come and take those away in trucks to Mirdha Bari area of Jatrabari, where these are processed in melamine factories.

Md Sagor, a middleman who supplies the bones to melamine factories, told this newspaper that they buy the bones for Tk 10 per kg, and send them to processing factories in Barishal.

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