In Swat’s major towns, scattered trash poses health hazards

Locals complain municipal workers do not dispose of garbage for months.

SWAT:

Mingora and Saidu Sharif, Swat’s two major towns which once offered tourists a clean and an unadulterated environment can now offer anything but.

In the past few years, the towns have become dirty and in some areas filthy due to scattered garbage, which, at times is not collected and disposed off by the municipal administrations for months.

Locals say they are at risk of diseases due to the lapse.

While the locals can be blamed for creating the mess in the first place, they maintain they are left with no option but to keep throwing trash in the garbage bins set up by the municipal administrations, or along the bins when they have been filled.

“Our town has never been this filthy,” said Haji Taj Mohmmad, a resident of Saidu Sharif. He said that workers of the local administration do not remove garbage from the trash bins for weeks and as a result the areas have started reeking of decomposed refuse. “But the foul odour is not the only problem, the rotting garbage has started causing diseases among the people,” he said.

Mohammad added that while the administration workers do not remove trash on time, they have also reduced the number of waste containers placed across the town. As a result, people have started throwing garbage in the open, and the two main streams running through Mingora Bazaar are facing the brunt of the practice.

“These streams used to be so clean that people used to wash their clothes or even swim in them,” said Murad Ali Khan, a social activist in Mingora, “but now the streams are filled with garbage.”

Teachers and students in two schools located close to the streams have their own complaints. “We cannot breathe properly let alone study due to the stench of the garbage,” said Wajid Zahoor, a ninth grader in Government High School Mulla Baba. The students, the faculty and the school administration have appealed to the government to remove the garbage from the streams and to timely dispose of trash from garbage bins placed across the two towns.

Meanwhile, civil society members and social activists have asked the town administrations to establish a landfill and a waste treatment plant away from populated areas. They also maintained that before the devolution of the local governments, the towns were better managed.

Despite several attempts, the Tehsil Municipal Administrator could not be reached for comments.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 18^th, 2012.