City's Rs24b garbage business fails to deliver

PAC questions failure to turn rubbish into revenue or electricity

KARACHI:

Sindh's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has exposed a four-year delay in implementing the 2021 amendments to the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board Act, with divisional boards yet to be constituted and the institution still operating without the rules required under the amended law. The disclosure came as lawmakers questioned why Karachi's waste management system, despite consuming Rs24 billion annually, had failed to generate revenue from the city's rubbish or produce electricity from it.

At its meeting on Thursday, chaired by Nisar Khuhro, the PAC directed the Local Government Department to establish divisional-level boards under the chairmanship of mayors and frame the necessary rules in accordance with a Sindh cabinet decision.

The proposed boards are to be established in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Mirpurkhas, Shaheed Benazirabad and Larkana.

The committee reviewed audit paragraphs concerning the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board's Karachi operations for 2023 and 2024. The audit raised concerns over the failure to generate revenue through waste recycling and the absence of arrangements to produce electricity from discarded waste, depriving the public of a potential source of lower-cost power.

Khuhro asked how much waste the institution collected across Sindh, how much it spent on collection and what revenue it generated from the material.

Managing Director Fawad Ghaffar Soomro told the committee that the board had an annual budget of Rs28 billion, of which Rs24 billion was spent on collecting waste in Karachi alone. The city generated an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 tonnes of waste daily. Three Chinese companies and one Turkish company had been contracted to collect waste in Karachi, Soomro told the committee.

He said door-to-door waste collection had been launched in one Karachi district, following a model used in Larkana. Around 70% of the city's population lived in established residential areas, where waste was collected from high-rise buildings through bins, while trolley-based collection was used in the remaining 30%, largely comprising informal settlements. The board had also entered into an agreement with DHA for waste recycling, he added.