The garbage heaps lying unattended for many days in various areas of the city are posing hazards to the health of citizens, as District Municipal Corporations (DMCs) have failed in timely dumping the garbage and solid waste at the designated landfill sites due to what authorities say prevailing financial constraints.
The dumps of garbage are witnessed in different areas of the city, including various union councils of Layari, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Saddar, Liaquatabad, Nazimabad, Korangi. However, municipal services department of the defunct city district government Karachi had run cleanliness drive twice in the city during last six months but it has failed to leave positive any impact.
The campaigns were aimed at removing heaps of garbage lying unattended across the city, cleaning and removing filth from large and small nullahs and shifting maximum amount of solid waste and garbage to designated landfill sites outside the city. But a visit to many city areas especially in Saddar, Jamshed Town and Lyari revealed that there are still heaps of garbage lying at many places in the city.
Sources said that DMCs were facing financial crunch because KMC has not empowered these DMCs financially under local government system 1979. Though CDGK has been abolished but the powers to collect revenue from various sources have not be devolved to DMCs. They said that though Octrai Zilla Tax (OZT) was being received by Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC) the due share of DMCs was not being transferred which was causing problems to district administration in provision of janitorial facilities to citizens.
"We have no funds to carry out our routine work. We are taking fuel on credit to run the vehicles for lifting garbage from area and dump at the landfill sites," said an official of DMC South.
Although the city's landfill sites have the capacity to absorb most of the daily waste produced by the city, hardly 40 percent of the waste is collected timely due to lack of resources and poorly administered collection and disposal system. It has also been witnessed garbage including plastic and polyethylene bags, rotten food, domestic garbage, syringes other hospital waste are lying unattended at beaches.
Director Health Services Dr Shaukat Zaman when contacted said that under SLGO 1979 dumping of garbage at land fill sites was the responsibility of DMCs, adding that they can only provide co-ordination and technical assistance in this regard. Sources said under SLGO 1979 DMCs are entitled to collect local taxes, property taxes, charge parking fee, fee on advertisement campaigns to run their affairs smoothly.
They said there is every possibility that new local government system would be introduced within next couple of weeks as deliberations are underway between the collation partners in Sindh government to reach at consensus over the issue. They said authorities concerned terming the ongoing system as transitional arrangement said that due to reasons all powers were not being devolved to DMCs.
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