ISLAMABAD, Oct 15: Over 47,920 tons of solid waste is produced daily in Pakistan, says a UNDP report.

According to the report, due to shortage of waste lifting machinery and manpower, lack of financial resources and improper management, solid waste was not being adequately collected for disposal. It said 60 per cent of the total waste was lifted for dumping and the rest ended up in open plots.

Garbage is thrown in gutters, pounds, lakes and canals, turning these places into breeding grounds of germs, bacteria, flies and mosquitoes. This leads to spread of various allergies and diseases like, cholera, malaria, typhoid etc.

The waste-dumping process in big cities presents a sorry state of affairs, the report said. Only Peshawar generates 300 tones of solid waste a day. Rawalpindi is another example where only 30 to 40 per cent of solid waste is collected, out of which 50 to 70 percent is transported to dumping sites.

Unavailability of dumping sites and poor waste collection system not only cause inconvenience to citizens, but also affect their health. Citizens have legitimate rights to quality services in context of waste collection and disposal, but this right is invariably denied to them.

According to the UNDP report, industrial waste, that generally includes hazardous chemicals, is very dangerous, as it not only directly affects people, but also gets into the food chain and poses serious threats to human life.

Although, this problem has been recogniszed, no significant efforts have yet been made to enforce relevant provisions of Environment Protection Act, 1997 on factories discharging effluents in open places.

Most of the factories continue violating the relevant laws in connivance with the officials concerned, and are functioning uninterruptedly without having suitable waste treatment or disposal plants in place. Tanneries in Kala Shah Kaku, Sambrial and Sialkot are a few examples in this regard. Most of these industries release their untreated waste into streams and drains, contaminating rivers as well as underground water reserves.