For CDA, commercialisation trumps cleanliness

Civic agency to shift public dumping site in Sector I-12 to undisclosed location.

ISLAMABAD:

A few weeks ago, while inaugurating the ‘Clean and Green Islamabad Campaign’ at Sector I-9,  Capital Development Authority (CDA) Chairman Tahir Shahbaz had ordered civic agency officials to take steps to ensure the strict implementation of municipal laws for anti-littering.

The CDA’s anti-littering law mandates the imposition of an on-the-spot fine of between Rs50 and Rs300 for public littering.

In 2011, around 400 residents of the capital were fined under this very law.

In reality, however, the civic agency is the biggest violator of its anti-littering law, having been guilty of dumping waste illegally in public since its establishment in 1960.

To compound the problem, the civic agency has decided to shift the open dumping site, not for the first time, from its current location in Sector I-12, to one that has not yet been finalised.

“We decided to shift the dumping site from Sector I-12 after we had planned to construct commercial plots here,” said CDA Environment Member Ahsan Ali Mangi while talking to The Express Tribune.



The CDA will be holding an auction of some of the 52 recently demarcated commercial plots at Sector I-12 Markaz on June 21.

The plots, from whose sale the CDA is expecting to earn around Rs30 billion, are 1,069 square yards in size. They will entail the construction of hotels, motels, shops, wedding halls and restaurants.

“We have decided to lure more investors to the auction. The open dumping site was not giving a pleasant look to the area where Saddar Market’s construction had been planned,” said CDA Planning Member Mustafain Kazmi.



CDA records based on the Waste Characterisation Study 2006, the results of which were last updated in early 2012, indicate that the volume of waste generated within Islamabad’s municipal limits ranges between 750 to 800 tons per day. This equates to an average of 1.90 to 4.29 kg per home per day.

The waste generated includes municipal, kitchen, green, domestic, commercial, building material and other scraps.

Mangi said the capital’s waste collection system was much better than in other big cities across the country. However, he lamented that the waste was being dumped in public and had caused pollution and irreparable harm to the environment.

“The CDA collects around 90 per cent of the total waste generated within its municipal limits and we are striving to improve this further,” he said.

He added that the civic agency was considering a number of projects in which waste could be utilised for other purposes.

Mangi said the establishment of a landfill site at Kuri was not out of the question but would depend heavily on the availability of funds.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 9^th, 2013.