KARACHI:Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah’s month-long Clean My Campaign ended up on Monday with lifting of 979,941 tons of garbage from the beautiful city of Karachi, but this effort would continue in the shape of shared responsibility to be made with all the stakeholders.
This was stated by Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah while reviewing the progress of the garbage lifting work assigned to deputy commissioners here at CM House. The review meeting was attended by Minister Local Government Syed Nasir Shah, PSCM Sajid Jamal Abro, Secretary Local Government Roshan Shaikh, Commissioner Karachi Iftikhar Shahalwani, MD SSWMA Asif Ikram, Additional secretary CM House Fayaz Jatoi and others. Nasir Shah briefed the chief minister about the successful campaign launched at his initiative.
With a population of at least 23 million, Karachi produces 14000 to 16000 tons of solid waste on daily basis. There are 20 plus agencies, including Cantonment Boards, PQA, PR, DMCs and SSWMB which are trying to dispose of the waste in the city.
The primary responsibility of solid waste management (SWM) lies with the local councils in the administrative jurisdiction of the provincial government. Since 2013-14, the Sindh government has consistently increased the budget of KMC and DMCs.
The chief minister said that the total outlay of DMCs in 2013-14 was Rs5743 million, which had been increased to Rs 13792 million (net increase of 140%). However, solid waste management remained sub-optimal. Therefore, to augment the performance of solid waste management, the government established SWMB through an Act of the Assembly and, later, entered into a seven-year management contract with Chinese Companies in four districts, at a cost of $52 million. Before the establishment of SWMB, the total solid waste lifted to Landfill sites (LFSs) was not more than 5000 tons per day: after its establishment, the figure reached to 13000 tons per day. However, the backlog still continued to accumulate, especially in districts where SWMB operations did not extend. They are Central, Korangi and West districts.
Cleanliness Drive: Launched from 21stSeptember, DCs in all six districts were directed to spearhead the month-long campaign for clearing the backlog. Necessary coordination was made with other agencies to start the same in their areas of jurisdiction. During this exercise, 62 temporary GTSs were established. Until 20th October 2019, estimated solid waste collected at these GTSs is 370,504 which include South 13,790, East 52152, Malir 24,292, Korangi 93,630, West 96,705, Central 89,935.
Out of 370,504 tons of garbage, 295,563 tons have been disposed of at LFSs by SSWMB. The disposed of garbage lifted from South is 14628, 27294 from East, 11,005 from Malir, 64,833 Korangi and 95,126 West, 82,677 tons from Central.
It may be noted that 82 percent of the total solid waste has been collected from the districts where SWMB is not working.
In addition to the campaign, SWMB has been performing its regular/routine job. They have disposed of 154,437 tons of solid waste from three districts since 21stSeptember. Thus, the cumulative for campaign plus the regular activity comes to 464390.21 tons. Their details are South 45038.90, East 87662.54, Malir 36993.69, Korangi 73463.31, West 1077,772.55, Central 91511.92 and others 21,947.
In addition to all this the DCs of Korangi and Malir collected the Solid Waste at permanent GTS of Sharafi Goth where total solid waste to be lifted to LFS is 455,000 tons.