Karachi: A bulging metropolis

KARACHI:

The unattended piles of garbage in this megacity of 22million residents pose a serious health and environmental hazard, while the lack of coordination among the civic bodies and deteriorating law and order situation further dampens the efforts to collect garbage.

Karachi is divided amongst various land control authorities including Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), all five DMCs, cantonments boards, Defense Housing Authority, Civil Aviation Authorities and others.

“Due to absence of city councils or people’s representatives at grassroots level, the waste management problem will continue to persist” said Kashif Ali, a resident of Gulshan-e-Iqbal .

The president of KMC CBA union, Syed Zulfiqar Ali Shah, said that the city generates 8,000 to 10,000 tons of garbage per day while we have only two landfill sites to depose it.

The KMC and DMCs have suffered due to highly mismanaged administrative and financial affairs and are now facing serious difficulties in discharging basic duties, he concluded.

“First the government must constitute a plan to solve the financial crises, which are prevailing in the civic bodies since long; then they must chalk out a comprehensive strategy to collect and dump the garbage’ he suggested.

The General Secretary of Sindh Private Hospital and Clinic Association, Professor Abdul Ghafoor Shoro, said the piles of garbage besides increasing the threats of skin, waterborne and airborne diseases also contribute to psychological problems.

“The piles of garbage and accumulated sewage have also led to increase of mosquitos.”



A member of “Shehri -Citizens for better environment”, Khatib Ahmed, said that the exacerbation of the problem of waste management can be judged by the fact that even important government areas and upscale neighbourhoods are no longer guaranteed proper garbage removal services. “The private sector collects 60 per cent of the city’s garbage and recycles it; most of the civic bodies leave the garbage unattended at every corner of the city.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 11^th, 2014.