{"id":410,"date":"2025-06-10T20:26:04","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/they-think-were-pigs-timor-lestes-rubbish-dump-is-making-people-sick\/"},"modified":"2025-06-10T20:26:04","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:26:04","slug":"they-think-were-pigs-timor-lestes-rubbish-dump-is-making-people-sick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/they-think-were-pigs-timor-lestes-rubbish-dump-is-making-people-sick\/","title":{"rendered":"‘They think we’re pigs’: Timor-Leste’s rubbish dump is making people sick"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The smoke from burning waste gets so thick at Delfina Martin’s home in Timor-Leste, she and her children struggle to breathe.<\/p>\n

But she says it’s not the only way the country’s biggest rubbish dump — only 300 metres from her house — damages her family’s health.<\/p>\n

“During the rainy season the children have stomach aches, fever, gastroenteritis,” she says.<\/p>\n

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Delfina Martin says the Tibar rubbish dump is causing health issues for her family. (ABC News: Vonia Vieira<\/span>)<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“My mother also suffered from tuberculosis and was treated at the clinic, but in 2014 she died.”<\/p>\n

Rubbish from the capital Dili, home to about 300,000 people, is transported and dumped in the 23-hectare landfill, about 12 kilometres west of the city.<\/p>\n

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Unable to find another home, Ms Martin has lived near the rubbish dump in Tibar, a long-established residential area, for more than 30 years.<\/p>\n

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People make a living picking waste at the Tibar rubbish dump. (ABC News: Vonia Vieira<\/span>)<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Flies come into her house from the rubbish dump, spoiling the family’s food, she says.<\/p>\n

Ms Martin is one of many residents who fear the rubbish dump is wrecking their health.<\/p>\n

Her neighbour, Miranda Dos Santos, says the smoke from burning waste has weighed heavily on her.<\/p>\n

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“I have regular coughs, fevers and stomach pain, and then I contracted [tuberculosis],” she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I underwent treatment at the clinic and took medication for six months.”<\/p>\n

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Miranda Dos Santos says the rubbish dump is the reason she has tuberculosis. (ABC News: Vonia Vieira<\/span>)<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Timor-Leste’s government responded to residents’ concerns by vowing in 2012 to relocate the rubbish dump.<\/p>\n

But Ms Martin says despite the promise, nothing has happened.<\/p>\n

“Hospital garbage is also thrown here, people do not bury anything,” she says.<\/p>\n

‘They think we’re animals’<\/h2>\n

Waste disposal has been one of Timor-Leste’s most visible problems.<\/p>\n

With scant waste management infrastructure and services, it has mainly disposed of rubbish by dumping and burning at disposal sites, a 2023 analysis from the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) found.<\/p>\n

SPREP’s study also found no landfills or dump sites in Timor-Leste were up to “modern” standards of waste disposal that minimised their impacts on the environment.<\/p>\n

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Tibar rubbish dump is the only controlled landfill in Timor-Leste. (ABC News: Vonia Vieira<\/span>)<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Researchers found many households and businesses were illegally dumping and burning their waste.<\/p>\n

Tibar’s rubbish dump, which began operating in 1982, is the only controlled landfill in Timor-Leste. This means it is managed with some level of government oversight.<\/p>\n

Still, the smell of waste there can be overwhelming, Ms Dos Santos says.<\/p>\n

“Sometimes garbage from the trucks falls on the road, but [garbage collectors] are not interested in picking it up,” she says.<\/p>\n

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“They think we are not human. They think we are pigs or animals living here.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

More than 1,800 people have been treated for acute respiratory infections at the Tibar medical centre over the past year — at least 10 times the national rate.<\/p>\n

Timor-Leste’s National Director of Health covering the Tibar area, Manuel Albino, says the health impacts of the dump are a “national” problem.<\/p>\n

“In terms of public health, the communities in Tibar are at severe risk from the garbage that comes from the capital,” he says.<\/p>\n

Mr Albino says along with acute respiratory infections like pneumonia, it has caused other common illnesses in the area including diarrhoea.<\/p>\n

Nuno Vital Soares, Director of Timor-Leste’s Laboratory National Hospital, says the high rates of illness in Tibar are undoubtedly because of substandard water and pollution from the dump.<\/p>\n

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“The water consumed can have a negative impact on pregnant women. It can be seen from the respiratory tract,” he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

“If the water is contaminated with some chemicals or microbes, there is no treatment for it properly, even if its percentage is small.”<\/p>\n

Environmental experts call for urgent change<\/h2>\n

The Timor-Leste government says it is aware of the problems, and is trying to address them with new technology and waste disposal practices aiming to reduce contamination.<\/p>\n

“Since 2022 until today, we have stopped burning garbage, started reducing the amount of waste,” Domingos Godinho, Director of Water, Sanitation and Environment Services at Dili Municipality, says.<\/p>\n