Saudi family survives on garbage as food

Strollers at a seafront area in the eastern Saudi port of Dammam are gradually getting used to seeing several children scavenging for food and clothes in the waste bins before trotting back into their tiny tent installed on the dirty sand.
 
At first, passersby had thought the children were on a picnic and were just playing near the waste bins. But as days passed and the children were still invading the bins, they now seem to realise it is not a picnic but a tragedy.
 
Shabib Al Shammari, his wife and seven children have stumbled across that waste-rich area and decided to take it as their new living quarters after they were ejected from their house because he could no longer afford the rising rent since he was sacked from his job because of illness, according to Sharq newspaper.
 
The family is now crammed in a little tent and is surviving on alms as well as food and clothes scavenged by the children in the waste bins scattered on the deserted sandy area at the seafront in the world’s largest oil exporter.
 
“I have no choice but to come and live in this tent here,” Shammari said before he started to cry, according to the newspaper.
 
“Can you believe that my family lives on alms by cleaners and construction workers…what can I do when I see my own children get so delighted when they find some clothes in the waste bin as if they have got Eid clothes,” said Shammari, who had a stroke that ended his job as a bus driver.
 
Shammari said his tent could collapse at any moment because of the strong winds and weather change ahead of winter.
 
“I ask you to come inside my tent and see by yourself how we live…food leftovers are scattered and we use clothes as mattresses to sleep…there are no utilities in the tent except for a small gas cooker….now this gas cylinder has run out of gas but I can not afford a new one, so how are we going to cook.”
 
Shammari appealed for the government to help his family find a suitable shelter ahead of winter and before “diseases attack us.”
 
“I am not asking for any help for myself…I am only asking for mercy for my children…it’s not their fault that their father is poor and can not feed them.”

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