Govt assures of rebuilding rain-ravaged infrastructure

Sindh Minister of Local Government, Syed Nasir Hussain Shah Wednesday announced that the road and civic infrastructure of Karachi would be rebuilt and overhauled immediately after the end of current monsoon season.

He was addressing concluding session of National Waste Management Conference organised by the National Forum for Environment and Health (NFEH).

The minister said that proper waste collection system would be made fully operational in all districts of Karachi in the next few weeks and Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) would made proper arrangements for daily collection and disposal of garbage from the metropolis.

SSWMB Managing-Director Zubair Ahmed Channa informed that the board was transporting up to 9,000 tones of waste generated in Karachi daily to landfill sites while just a year ago only 3,000 tones of garbage was reaching at those sites for safe disposal.

The Dean of Architecture and Management Sciences of the NED University of Engineering & Technology, Prof Dr Noman Ahmed, emphasised that hospital waste should be properly segregated before its disposal on a scientific basis.

He said that municipal workers and scavengers in the city were prone to deadly infectious diseases as they handled the hospital waste daily without any safety precautions much like the casual way the municipal garbage is handled in Karachi.

He lamented that there was no check at all to stop scavengers from extracting useful and recyclable material from the hospital trash as this practice should come to an end to safeguard public health.

He said the government should provide maximum resources and support for developing an efficient system of hospital waste disposal as unsafe practices in this regard had gravely compromised public health during the coronavirus pandemic.

TransKarachi CEO Wasif Ijlal, said the Red Line BRTS project being built in Karachi from Malir Halt to Numaish would generate minimal carbon emissions as it would operate on bio gas to be generated by consuming dung available in Karachi’s Cattle Colony.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 18^th, 2022.