FWMC capable of handling 64% of solid waste
The Faisalabad Waste Management Company (FWMC) has said Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Malik Kashif Raza Awan has said the company has the a capacity to lift only 900 tonnes from within the city while it was estimated that 1,400 tonnes of solid waste was produced by the 32 million population of the city.
In the absence of guidelines by the local government, FWMC has not been able to establish a sanitary landfill site for the last two years to dispose of solid waste.
The FWMC had achieved a milestone with the acquisition of 150 acres of land for the construction of a landfill site.
A suitability study of a landfill site, environmental impact assessment and Geotech investigation were conducted by the National Engineering Services Pakistan (NESPAK) and a no objection certificate (NOC) was successfully received from the environment department.
Moreover, PC-2 was prepared and approved from the Planning and Development (P&D) Department over the last few years.
A bottleneck was created, when it was decided in the 55th meeting of the provincial development working party (PDWP) held on March 9, 2018 that “Local government (LG) and community development shall be the only executing agency for feasibilities studies and designing of the landfill site.”
The meeting was presided over by the chairman of P&D Board for the approval of PC-2.
After the condition was placed, the FWMC was struck in limbo and the project suffered delay that is ongoing to the present.
In order to proceed further, the company management sent several letters over a period of time to high offices of the LG department for issuance of guidelines in this regard to no avail.
Sources within the company revealed that no progress is in sight owing to the department’s engagement in pandemic containment.
FWMC CEO Awan told The Express Tribune that to achieve sustainability, a detailed revenue generation plan has been submitted to the LG department and various meetings were held in the Punjab Finance Department to finalize the modalities for collection as an array of resources are required to segregate and recycle waste.
“We had held consultations with SEPCO-1, a Chinese company, to sell solid waste to them and the said company had expressed strong willingness to collect and purchase it. However, on getting no positive response from the provincial authorities, the company never contacted again,” he pointed out.
He further said that two years ago the government had allocated Rs50 million as seed money to develop the landfill site but owing to procedural barriers, and non-issuance of guidelines and future directions, the allocation lapsed.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 25th, 2020.