This photo of a GTS in Karachi was part of a multimedia journalism project at the IBA-CEJ by Naimat Khan, Ayesha Mir, Nosheen Hussain and Usman Ghani. Link: https://videostreet.pk/cej/
The World Bank has allocated $10 million in a loan to make the Sindh Solid Waste Management Authority a “world class” organisation and build it a 500-acre landfill site on Karachi’s outskirts.
If this goes ahead, this will be the third landfill site in Karachi, which has two others at Gond Pass and Deh Jam Chakro. But these two sites are not properly managed and are full. In fact, Deh Jam Chakro was also built by donor money.
“Jam Chakro is a large International Donor-funded landfill site in Karachi, when opened in 1996 it was intended to be carefully managed by the Karachi municipal authorities,” writes Jonathan R. Rouse of Loughborough University in a research paper. “However, within weeks of opening it was overtaken by informal-sector waste workers. They are mostly poor rural migrants who have gravitated towards urban areas seeking work. Their waste sorting and recycling work, which involves burning waste, is now responsible for serious environmental degradation and poor waste management.”
The challenge this time would be to ensure that this landfill site will be managed scientifically.
News of this development came via a handout from Chief Minister House on Wednesday. It did not contain details of what site would be chosen on Karachi’s outskirts. The handout did not specify how the $10 million figure had been arrived at and how it would be spent.
This is what it said: “This [news] was disclosed in a meeting held between Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah and an eight-member World Bank delegation led by its Global Director for Urban, Resilience and Land Practice Groups Dr Sameh Naguib Wahba Tadros.”
Other delegation members included Manager Urban Sector in South Asia Dr Catalina Marulanda, Manager Resilience Practice in South Asia Christoph Pusch. The chief minister was assisted by Planning & Development Chairperson Naheed Shah, Principal Secretary to CM Sajid Jamal Abro, Home Secretary & Project Director for the Karachi Neighbourhood Improvement Programme (KNIP) Kazi Kabir.
The Sindh Solid Waste Management Authority was made a legal entity in 2014. “It is a new organisation,” said the CM. “And would definitely take time to achieve expertise but even then there is a dire need to operate it in a scientific manner and make it a leading solid waste management organisation in the country.”
How Deh Jam Chakro works by Jonathan R. Rouse in ‘Seeking common ground for people: Livelihoods, governance and waste’ published in
Habitat International, 2006.
Habitat International, 2006.
To this World Bank Global Director Dr Sameh said that in the Karachi Neighbourhood Improvement Programme there was a provision for solid waste management. He agreed to allocate $10 million for capacity building, technical expertise and the construction of a new landfill site for SSWMA.
The chief minister said that he was keen to develop a most modern and environment-friendly landfill site on the outskirts of the city. “This landfill site must be equipped with all the necessary machinery, gadgets, equipment and technical staff and will be useful for power generation,” he said. He added that instead of spending millions of rupees on garbage lifting, he was planning to make garbage a fund-generating work. “If we achieve this target then SSWMA will become a self-sufficient organization,” he said.
Karachi’s garbage collection and solid waste management has become a battlefield since its drains choked these monsoon rains. The chief minister and local government minister have been making regular public pronouncements on how they are approaching the problem, as has the mayor, who maintains that garbage collection comes in his job description.
Another handout on Wednesday from CM House gave a much more detailed breakdown of these efforts. “Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has directed the district administration of Karachi to expedite the on-going cleanliness drive and submit their proposals for making it sustainable, otherwise the entire exercise would fail to create an impact,” it said.
He had presided over a meeting on the garbage lifting drive. The meeting was attended by Chief Secretary Mumtaz Shah, provincial ministers, advisors and special assistants assigned to monitoring the drive, Local Government Secretary Roshan Shaikh, Karachi Commissioner Iftikhar Shahalwani, SSWMA MD Asiaf Ikram, Water Board MD Asadullah Khan all six deputy commissioners were present. (The mayor was not as he was in Copenhagen for the World Mayor Summit.)
The chief minister was told that from September 21 to October 8, 2019 a total of 450,896.51 tons of garbage had been lifted by deputy commissioners and SSWMA. The authority alone lifted 205,805.51 tons from temporary garbage transfer stations and dumped them at the landfill sites. The handout did not specify which sites.
The deputy commissioner of Central said they had almost cleared their entire backlog and was assigned to have another round of his district to remove any remaining trash, if any. The chief minister told him to find suitable sites for dustbin construction.
The deputy commissioner of Malir said that he has cleaned around 75% of garbage from his area and continues. He said that he has constructed some dustbins but even then people preferred to throw their trash on the main road.
The DC East said that his entire district has been cleaned but new heaps were emerging. To this the chief minister asked him to activate his DMC and monitor the performance of the SSWMA. “It becomes the duty of the DMC concerned to ensure proper cleaning by the SSWMA,” he said.
DC Malir said that his district was the worst for garbage heaps but he has “with his constant efforts” cleaned the main roads of Bhains Colony, Malir 15 and rural areas. The chief minister said: “I don’t want to see dust and trash lying on or along the roads.”
The minister for Katchi Abadies, Murtaza Baloch, was told to personally monitor cleanliness work by involving DMC Malir and the Karachi District Council. DC South said that their district has almost been cleared but some shopkeepers and food streets at Boat Basin and other areas were throwing their trash on the roads when they closed their shops at night.
The chief minister told the Commissioner to inform all builders to remove debris on their own. Those who refuse or fail to will have their buildings sealed and construction work stopped.
DCs were told to ensure that every shopkeeper puts a dustbin at the entrance of his shop. “I am directing you to start imposing a fine on whoever violates the code of conduct of throwing trash.”
Publish in Samaa 10 October 2019