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December 5th, 2008
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Scavenging scrap a way of life

Many depend on the illegal practice as a welfare supplement

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
March 5th, 2008 issue

JAN PŘEROVSKÝ/THE PRAGUE POST
A Roma child growing up in a scrap yard in Zárubek, north Moravia
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JAN PŘEROVSKÝ/THE PRAGUE POST
The waste area of Mittal Steel seeps into a local stream.
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An old chemical plant in Zárubek is being demolished, its pieces ample pickings for scrap hunters.
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Notable thefts

Scrap metal scrounging is a nationwide issue
Feb. 2008 Litvínov, north Bohemia: A 33-year-old man was caught pilfering more than 300 kilograms of metal worth 20,000 Kč. Police arrested the man as he was loading the loot into his vehicle
Feb. 2008 Karviná, north Moravia: Police arrested a 21-year-old man for stealing four sewer lids, two motors, a gear box and 20 tractor weights and selling them to a scrap yard, causing total damages of 15,200 Kč
Dec. 2007/Jan. 2008 Cheb, west Bohemia: Unidentified thieves dismantled and removed a disused 4-ton, 4-meter-long railroad bridge, causing 20,000 Kč in damages
July 2007 Kladno, central Bohemia: Thieves attempted to steal scrap from an abandoned factory. Unfortunately, they chose the steel girders supporting the roof, which subsequently fell, fatally crushing two thieves and injuring three others. They earned the Darwin Award, an international anti-prize for deaths resulting from acts of stupidity
May 2007 Znojmo, south Moravia: An unknown thief went straight to the source and stole 75 kilograms of metal, including a large copper cauldron, directly from a scrap yard. Police estimate damages around 7,000 Kč

Ostrava, north Moravia
On Feb. 18, police in the Cheb region of west Bohemia publicized the curious details of an unconventional theft. In the period between Dec. 12 and Jan. 18, unidentified scroungers had dismantled and stolen a 4-ton bridge that stretched across an old railroad between the town of Cheb and a tiny municipality called Starý Hroznatov.
The rusting, 4-meter (13-foot) long bridge was slated for demolition and located on a long-defunct track. Nevertheless, the unorthodox nature of the theft — which police say caused the railroad company damages of approximately 20,000 Kč ($1,163) — raised the eyebrows of local authorities.
“Metal thefts happen on a regular basis here, but this is of an entirely different caliber,” said Cheb police spokeswoman Martina Hrušková. “It is likely that the railway bridge ended up at a scrap metal shop.”
Stealing metal is a crime that police across the country encounter on a regular basis. In the Cheb region alone, police say the damage caused by these thefts annually amounts to hundreds of thousands of crowns.
“Metal stealing is a problem in every region,” said national police presidium spokeswoman Jana Bartíková.
Indeed, on the other end of the country, scroungers in the industrial city of Ostrava make a way of life out of foraging for scrap metal amid the mile-long waste sites surrounding local factories. Stretching along the city’s periphery, these barren wastelands serve as a dumping ground for the byproducts of plants such as the nation’s largest steel producer, ArcelorMittal Ostrava (AMO), part of the largest steel conglomerate in the world.
To prevent the corrosive slag, as the byproducts are called, from polluting the ground and seeping into the groundwater, AMO uses large magnets to draw metal pieces from the area and transports them to recycling sites.
“The company aims to re-use large-volume waste as much as possible,” said AMO spokesman Vladimír Razska, who could not be reached for further comment by press time.
But, because the magnet is not sensitive enough to attract alloys, much of the scrap metal remains behind. “The separators can’t pick up everything. … At least 20 percent of the scrap metal stays in the ground,” said Kumar Vishwanathan of Vzájemné soužití (Life Together) an Ostrava NGO providing aid to the socially disadvantaged. “Machines cannot collect these scraps, but human hands can.”
A longtime Ostrava resident with close ties to the city’s underprivileged communities, Vishwanathan speaks for a group of Roma locals for whom pilfering scrap metal is an important source of income. In Zárubek, one such community on the edge of Ostrava, resident Petr Dunka laughs as two boys with armfuls of coiled metal rods frolic amid the sludge near one of the neighborhood’s derelict houses.
“Look at them — they’re growing up in a scrap metal yard,” he said. “They’re not even 6 years old, and they can tell the difference between copper and aluminum.”
Now a superintendent at the Zárubek children’s center, Dunka has had years of experience collecting scrap metal from the looming waste sites that encircle the Roma community.
“It’s strenuous work,” he said. “You have to walk along the old tracks — about 2 kilometers — just to get to the heap where the big pieces are. Then you load up a cart with 500 kilos of metal and wheel it back.”
Aside from subjecting themselves to backbreaking labor, those who trespass on AMO property to collect metal are in danger of being attacked by guard dogs.
“I know a guy who fell and split his leg open while being chased by a dog,” Dunka recalled with a shudder. “We’ve also had many altercations with the guards. The police are called, but they cannot do anything because it’s private property.”
The current payoff for a kilogram of metal, he added, is about 5 or 6 Kč.
“If you have a proper job, it’s not worth it,” Dunka said, “but to those who are unemployed, it makes a good supplement to their welfare checks.”
Despite the risks, Vishwanathan said it was unlikely that the people of Zárubek would stop visiting the waste sites. A more constructive decision, he said, was for the companies to grant the scroungers permission to collect the metal on their property. “It doesn’t make sense — the dumping sites are legal, the scrap metal yards are legal, but collecting the metal is not,” he said. “The steel plants are treating these people like criminals, when in fact they’re doing them an ecological service.”

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com


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