Almost 15,000 tons of garbage is dumped daily in Karachi and there has been no effort to resolve this issue
LAHORE: Karachi is the biggest metropolitan city of Pakistan. But its garbage and sewerage continue to be dumped into the sea, creating environmental disasters. Toxic waste is killing fish and posing a health hazard to citizens. Unregulated and irregular construction has added to the mess and different stakeholders blame one another, without making any effort to resolve basic the problem of garbage collection and drain blockage. Almost 15,000 tons of garbage is dumped daily in Karachi and there has been no effort for past few decades to resolve issues.
What has made matters worse is that only 40% of revenue collected from residents in the form of property tax and other services is collected by the Sindh government or the local government and the rest is collected by various Cantonment Boards i.e. DHA, etc. The Federal Government, the Provincial Government, the local City Government had no issue when almost over 35,000 acres of land, which could not be sold to anybody, was allowed to be illegally occupied by powerful land mafias. All that is required is two to three thousand acres of land suitable for landfill dump site to be allocated instead of criminally dumping it into the sea.
The biggest landfill in the USA, which stores about nearly 50 million tonnes, is in a narrow valley in the Apex area an hour drive north of Las Vegas. The ideal choice of a landfill is an area surrounded by small mountains. The garbage is layered like sheet cakes beneath which pipes crisscross the land, carrying away the methane generated by decomposing garbage. Such garbage dumps exist all over the world, but not in Pakistan.
Malik Tariq Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, August 24th, 2019.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
