Bhara Kahu accounts for nearly 40% of capital’s garbage

CDA claims average garbage collection has increased in the city

ISLAMABAD:

With the population of the federal capital more than doubling from 0.8 million in 1998 to over 2.07 million in 2017 with an annual growth rate of 4.91 per cent, the non-sectoral areas of the city have seen an explosion in population.

Hence it is no surprise that some of these areas, particularly Bhara Kahu accounts for the major chunk of garbage generated and subsequently lifted in the city.

The Capital Development Authority (CDA) in a statement on Wednesday said that ever since the sanitation department returned to it last week from the Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation (IMC), it has removed around 5,200 tonnes of garbage from the city as 1,600 sanitation workers participated in a special cleanliness drive in the city with the help of 40 dump trucks, four excavators, eight buckets and other heavy machinery.

Of this, the authority said around 2,000 tonnes of garbage was removed from the Bara Kahu area alone or around 38.46 percentage.

The civic body further said that the average garbage collection in the city has increased from around 500 tonnes per day under the IMC to 650 tonnes. The authority claimed that this became possible due to better administrative control and monitoring of the directorate by the CDA administration.

Moreover, the authority said that it had increased the duty times of sanitary workers to 5pm. Previously, the staff worked only from 7am to 3pm. Moreover, the sanitary staff in the markets have started to work in double shifts, until 11pm. Notices have also been issued to elements involved in littering with 350 challans issued to persistent violators which have been forwarded to Senior Special Magistrate. With the cleanliness of the Faisal Mosque and other tourist attraction areas in the capital coming under scrutiny in a Senate panel, the authority said that they were undertaking cleanliness work in the Shah Allah Ditta area, Ali Pur Farash, Khanna and Golra.

The CDA statement added that the authority’s chairman and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Chief Commissioner Aamer Ali Ahmed has directed the Finance Wing to allocate funds to the sanitation directorate to place additional garbage trolleys and containers at collection points.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2020.