Munkherdene should be in high school. Instead the 15-year-old Mongolian sifts through mountains of garbage each day at a rubbish tip in Ulan Bator, collecting scraps of steel, copper and plastic.
Munkherdene, his widower father and elder sister — who moved into a traditional ger closer to the dump after his mother died — sell their wares at the markets. For his toil, the teen makes about 3,000 tugrik, or US$2.70, a day.
“I couldn’t enroll at a new school so it’s easier for me to work at the tip,” Munkherdene said, explaining that when the family moved they lost their legal urban registration — and with it the right to education and healthcare.
Mongolia, one of the poorest countries in Asia, is in the sights of foreign investors looking to cash in on the landlocked country’s bounty of natural resources, including vast untapped mineral deposits.
Luxury brands including Louis Vuitton and Burberry have opened boutiques on Ulan Bator’s Sukhbaatar Square, which is also home to the country’s parliament.
However, for most of Mongolia’s 2.7 million citizens, poverty is still their daily reality. Twenty years after embracing democracy and capitalism, the government is struggling to meet the increasingly urban population’s social needs.
More than 40 percent of the country’s total population lives in Ulan Bator.
Thousands of herders have abandoned traditional nomadic life in search of economic opportunity or were driven to Mongolia’s cities after a devastating winter that killed off much of their livestock.
“Ulan Bator’s population grew from 600,000 in 1989 to 1,000,000 in 2007 and it’s expected to be 1.3 million in 2025,” UNICEF deputy representative Gilles Fagninou said, adding that overcrowding is a major obstacle to poverty alleviation.
Outside the city center, almost half of the capital’s population live in the sprawling ger districts, with no access to running water, poor sanitation and limited social services. In parliamentary elections in 2008, economic issues took center stage, with candidates from across the political spectrum pledging to improve national strategic asset management so as to guarantee a better distribution of wealth.
Both main parties promised cash payments of about US$1,150 to each citizen but those handouts never came, leading to public protests this year in Ulan Bator.
“We unfortunately don’t have a professional government. It consists of a bunch of politicians who were not properly trained,” said Jargalsaikhan, a leading Mongolian economist and political analyst.
A UN Development Programme report points to a failure in the country’s welfare system — not only were 89.1 percent of poor households receiving welfare payments, but 72.2 percent of non-poor households were also getting benefits.
“Cash payments solve short-term problems, but what really needs to be looked at is who is targeted,” Fagninou said.
As mining companies sign massive deals such as the US$5 billion agreement inked last year for the development of Mongolia’s massive Oyu Tolgoi copper deposit, the population has come to see resources as a quick fix.
Experts say those mining revenues will not necessarily trickle down to those who need them.
“I think the expectations are different to the realities,” said Arshad Sayad, who completed his term as the World Bank’s country manager for Mongolia in July.
“Several things need to be done to generate employment. One of them is realizing mining will not generate jobs. We need to look at other industries where you can add more value, like meat and cashmere,” he said.
Despite this, the more than one-third of Mongolia’s people who live below the poverty line cling to their dreams of a better life.
Ariunzaya, nine, cares for her six-year-old sister and three-year-old brother while her parents work at the rubbish tip.
“I want to be a professional dancer when I get older,” Ariunzaya says.
She shows off a few moves learned from other children — but her home has no electricity, so there is no music.
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