DOKUMENTARYO NI KARA DAVID

The "Basurero" is an i Witness documentary telling the story of its case studies.
The first part of the documentary begins in a family living in an overpass in Cubao also known
as "barangay overpass". During the day, the family begs from the people passing the overpass,
and during night they collect leftover foods that they called "batchoy". They collect batchoy from
garbage cans of fastfood restaurants but they also asked permission first before they start
collecting batchoy such as leftover vegetables, fish and meat.
One member of the family living in barangay overpass is Jennifer who believes that collecting
batchoy to feed their hunger is better than to live in marinduque wherein the only food that she
can eat all day are just boiled bananas.
After collecting enough batchoy for the family, they take it to the overpass and recook it so that
the germs are somehow killed. And the batchoy they collected become their meal for the night.
The second part of the story focuses on the "tambakeros", the term calles to a group of
scavengers that live in the dumpsite of pier 18 in Tondo, Manila.
One of the tambakeros is Jessie de Guzman who is popularly called "putol" by his coscavengers due to his incomplete number of fingers. Two of his fingers were cut off while he
was searching for scrops.
Another tragic experience made by being tambakero is the event that even the life of a young
child was taken. Jr Baloran is the name of the child who was accidentally killed by a bulldozer
while he was searching fore some plastics and cans. Adoracion and Fabian Baloran are the
parents of the innocent child. They decided to stop their activity as tambakeros because it just
reminds them of the painful accident happened to their son who was the only boy of the family.
Jay Taruc, the reporter of the documentary also try to be a tambakero for almost two hours but
unfortunately being tambakero is a very difficult job so he only earned 7 pesos from collecting
plastic and cans and according to the tambakeros by that amout you can buy icewater.
There are also other tambakeros in the dumpsite like Proceso dela Cruz a veteran tambakero,
Ronald a teenager that only works to support his vices which is rugby. According to Ronald,
most of the kids and teenagers tambakeros aging 10 to 16 years old use the money they earned
to buy rugby amounting 5 pesos per plastic. According to him there is a place in the dumpsite
where they do their vices, they called the place "sirang bahay" or an abandoned house.
The third case study discusses the new face of Smokey Mountain which is formerly a big
dumpsite and eventually rehabitalized. There are now building established in the place to serve
as a shelter for the former scavengers of the Smokey Mountain. They planted vegetables and
recycled the garbage into fertilizers to earn money rather than being scavengers again. The
children are now spending their time through studying and developing their talents like dancing.
Angela Villacoria who was a former scavenger is now a helper of her family in planting and
making new products like souvenir from recycled plastics. These total changes in Smokey
Mountain were brought about through the help of a person of a kind heart and artistic mind
named Fr. Benigno Beliran. He is a missionary who headed the different livelihood programs in
the Smokey Mountain.