A pungent smell greets buyers as they make their way inside the scrap market in Shershah — one of the largest scrap markets in Pakistan. Alongside the walled go-downs and warehouses, workers go about separating scrap — essentially electronic waste — which consists of cables, computer parts, machinery parts, copper and silver wires, microchips and other electronic goods.

Shershah starts where Lyari ends, near the Mira Nika Bridge, where an old restaurant named the ‘Pankha Hotel’ is situated. From there onwards, there is a long line of warehouses and spareparts markets going about their business. The area has a predominant Baloch, Sindhis and Pakhtun population and a minority of Urdu-speaking and Punjabi workers. There are Memon and Punjabi owners working alongside Baloch and Pakhtuns as their help or vice versa. Members of the Ganchhi and Kachhi communities are also found among the shopkeepers or scrap-sellers. Many of the workers come to the market from Korangi, Orangi, Malir and Lalu Khet.

Haji Essa, 68, sits inside one of the oldest scrap markets in Shershah known as the H. Akbar Godaam. It is a walled yard that is spread across 3km with copper, silver and cables being separated from electronic machinery parts on its premises. Speaking about the need for survival trumping health concerns, Essa smiled and said that, “Whether it’s me or the workers over here, our biggest concern is to earn for our families”.

The goods go to the weighting houses, where most scrap bought is weighed. The weighing shops usually use loading vehicles, in this case a small Suzuki pick-up that goes on the weighing scales first, and then the goods are placed on it. Waqar Kanta, Shershah Kanta and Tiger Kanta are some of the many weighing points scattered across Shershah. The finished scrap is then transported to Lahore.

In the past five years, the revenue generated by the electronic waste market has decreased substantially. Haji Essa points out two reasons for that: “The increasing price of the US dollar and the continuing strife in the area has made things very difficult around here. We used to save Rs100,000 from a certain amount of scrap imported; now we only save Rs20,000. Plus, we have to give extortion money on a monthly basis as well.”

Essa explains that previously a lot of people used to look around the market freely and decide what they were interested in acquiring. Nowadays, not many people come all the way to Shershah — mostly out of fear of violence in the area. “I started working here in 1973. Things were simple and straightforward then. There was no discrimination on the basis of ethnicity. At least, we knew we won’t be killed because of having a certain ethnic origin,” he added ruefully.

On the other side of the warehouse, everything looks cluttered from afar. A closer look reveals that the scrap is separated with a lot of precision by the workers. Huddled in a corner, while separating copper wires from a recently opened computer, only one man wears gloves out of the four sitting beside him. Asking him if they were provided by the shopkeeper elicited laughs all around, as his colleagues said that he probably “found the gloves from somewhere”. Just a few feet away, a man without a mask is busy burning copper. Yet, life goes on.

Despite having to work with fumes coming out from burning copper and cable wires on a day to day basis, health hazards appear to be a non-issue as they disregard the subject and are hesitant to even talk about it.

One of the owners Mohammad Asif, 32, said that there is no medical facility nearby so in case of emergency, people are taken to either Murshid Hospital, which is completely off route, or to Lyari General Hospital which is nearer than the other hospitals that he mentioned. “But usually our men don’t need such emergency treatments,” he added casually,

“We get scratches or burns, especially after we burn the waste. For that we have a pharmacy nearby from where we take a pill and it gets better,” related a worker at the same warehouse, “I don’t know the name of the pill, but I take it to feel better.”

Meanwhile, one owner of an e-waste dump site was of the view that, “taking a shower should fix the itching,” adding with a shrug, “that should be enough to get rid of it. Otherwise, who’ll do the work?”

For majority of workers, there is a lone food stall right in the middle of the warehouse that serves rice and chickpeas for Rs15. While most of the workers go for it, there are some who go out of the warehouse to eat. Rashid Ali is one of them.

For most of the workers who have either migrated from Punjab or Sindh, the situation gets extremely worrying at times. Hailing from Dadu, Rashid Ali said that, “being a daily wager is an unfortunate task, because of the frequent strikes. At times, the threat of a possible strike is enough to scare people away.” Many daily wagers, like Rashid, spend six months working and the other six in their village. But since many of them don’t earn enough, they are forced to stay on longer.

“The only fear I have is that I will be killed and left bleeding in the street somewhere. People keep to themselves around here, so it is difficult to share such things with others,” he added quietly.

Contrary to what is generally believed, there are not many child labourers or refugees from Afghanistan working at the Shershah scrap market — at least the ones that we visited. The men who work here are desperate, unaware and uninformed and for them making ends meet and surviving in this violent city is a bigger issue than the health hazards involved in their work.