One of the most dangerous jobs in the world only pays $12 a day
Topics: News, Health, World News, Social Media
Shola Lee
Featured Image Credit: Insider News/YouTube
Topics: News, Health, World News, Social Media
Get ready to meet the workers risking their lives for just $12 a day.
If you thought your job was bad, wait until you hear about the colleagues whose team bonding exercises involve a giant volcano and carrying their body weight in sulphur up a mountain.
What's worse is that many of them don't make it past 50, due to their dangerous working conditions.
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So, what is this awful job?
It's sulphur mining inside an active volcano in Indonesia and if you're wondering why the workers would risk their lives for just $12 a day, it's because the job is one of the better paid in the area.
As one of the miners, Mistar, who's been working on the Ljen Plateau for 30 years, explained that it's not easy work.
He revealed what the job involves and what they use the sulphur for.
He said: "Every day carrying sulphur, if our shoulders swell, it's normal.
"Even though this is a dangerous situation, we dare to die because we're afraid of hunger."
Their day-to-day role consists of taking two baskets into the volcano, filling them with around 200lbs of sulphur, and walking back up the mountain.
This process is repeated until the work is done, or they're forced to evacuate due to harmful white smoke pluming up from the volcano.
"We have to save ourselves immediately. We have to run if the smoke comes out."
Miners also typically have little protective clothing, with Mistar and his team wrapping cloth dipped in the water around their mouths to stop the sulphur from sticking.
And in 2011 the BBC reported that, in the past 40 years, 74 miners have died from just the overpowering fumes alone.
Mistar saying of the toxic fumes: "If it gets into your nose or mouth, it will suffocate you.
"If smoke enters the body, we will feel tightness, pain in the gut."
Mistar went on to explain: "Some of the miners here are sick. Sometimes while mining they have stomach-aches. Sometimes slipping. Sometimes someone breaks their legs."
This means that a lot of the workers have to 'climb up [the volcano] slowly, because if you are in a hurry, it will endanger yourself. You can fall'.
And if you're wondering what this is all in aid of, well, sulphur is used to make our sugar white, matches, and even some make-up products.
It comes typically comes from oil and gas refining but this volcanic outpost is one of the natural sulphur reserves still being mined.
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