The machines are here… now what?

Language barriers, complicated machinery and strict rules creating problems between local workers, Chinese supervisors

KARACHI: A strange silence has descended over the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) workshop on Nishtar Road. While local labourers employed by the KMC are busy assembling the recently transported Chinese machinery to lift garbage, Mr Tao - their new Chinese supervisor - is stacking hundreds of bin boxes in a single line.

After a while another Chinese supervisor drives a huge garbage compactor truck inside the workshop and parks it. The local labourers leave their work immediately to help the diver park. Farooq bangs his hand on the back of the truck like local conductors do in public buses, while Aslam signals the driver to keep reversing the vehicle.

"This is our daily routine," says Farooq. "We communicate through hand gestures or in our own Pakistani way, which these Chinese supervisors are unable to understand." The Chinese supervisors, he says, are unable to make head or tail of what the Pakistani labourers say and the labourers have no idea what their supervisors want from them.

The machinery may be ready but the workers of the DMCs and KMC are unsure about how to deal with their new bosses. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS

Succumbing to their own inabilities, the Sindh government has hired a Chinese company, Changyi Kangjie Sanitation Engineering Company, to lift garbage in districts South and East after approval from the respective districts' local councils.

Once the Chinese company takes over, garbage collection will be transferred to the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) from these two District Municipal Corporations (DMCs). For this purpose 22 of the 200 garbage-lifting machines and garbage compactor trucks have been cleared from the Karachi port and the remaining machinery will be cleared soon, after which it will be deployed for maintaining cleanliness in the city.

The machinery arrived at the start of January but was lying at Karachi port due to Customs formalities, according to SSWMB's managing director Dr AD Sajnani. Apart from these 200 machines, 200 tricycle refuse vehicles, 1,300 handcarts, 5,000 dustbins of 240-litre capacity, several 280-litre steel dustbins, 3,200 dustbins of 260-litre capacity, showers to clean trees, mechanical sweepers and street-washing vehicles have been cleared and few are yet to be cleared.

The Chinese supervisors have difficulty communicating with the local labourers. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS

Who will operate these machines?

While there is a severe crisis of coordination between the Chinese, KMC and DMC labourers, it has become difficult for local labourer to understand how to operate the automatic Chinese machineries.

According to one of the labourers, they operated similar Japanese automatic vehicles in 1983 but they were later scrapped. For these new Chinese vehicles, which are completely automatic, the DMC and KMC staff is skeptical.

A number of translators are available at the workshop, but according to the DMC labourers they are very few and are not present all the time. However, Sajnani refuted this by saying that the Chinese have brought their translators with them and their local labourers are not facing any problems.

The trucks are rear loaders but the shutters at the back of the garbage compactor trucks do not have any locks or mechanism to keep the shutters closed, which is a safety hazard for the sweepers who will operate it and often hang off the back, according to Farooq. "When we explained this to our Chinese supervisor, he was unable to understand," he lamented, adding that they are unable to voice their concerns to their new Chinese bosses.

The labourers feel that there are not enough translators present at the workshop to meet their needs. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS

Another official of the KMC, on the condition of anonymity, said that in the era of former city mayor, Mustafa Kamal, two very expensive and highly automatic snorkels were imported from Finland, which went out of order after the Baldia Factory inferno. "The local staff were too unknowledgable to handle those snorkels," lamented the official, adding that till date, the fault in those snorkels could not be repaired, as there is no expertise available in Pakistan to repair that.

Likewise, the official pointed out that if these Chinese machines were to go out of order, there would be no one to repair them here. Responding to this, a Pakistani representative of the Chinese company said that, according to the agreement, the Chinese company would repair any faults that occur in their vehicles at their own expense.

Can the machines be operated in Karachi?

KMC Sajjan Union president Zulfiqar Ali Shah said that the garbage compactor trucks are around 24-feet long and 10-feet wide, which is far too big to maneuver in the small, narrow streets of Lyari. However, according to the Chinese representative, there were will be 43 small compactors for thi task. Apart from that, the representative said that there are hundreds of tricycles with boxes which will be going inside the smaller lanes.

Halfhearted work

The salaries of the DMC's municipal staff will now be paid via the SSWMB and the Chinese company will pay them 25% extra, along with overtime. However, Shah demanded the government continue their salaries from the DMCs. He also demanded all health and other facilities, including housing allowance, and threatened to go on strike if their demands are not met.

The supervisors feel that the labourers are making excuses to avoid working. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS

Responding to this, the Chinese representative said that the local labourers are trying their best to find as many faults as they can so that they do not have to work. The Chinese supervisors, he said, keep a watch on how many vehicles leave the workshop and how many enter. "They even make an entry for the diesel used by each vehicle," he said, adding that this is what irks local labourers who are not used to such discipline.