LAHORE, Dec 11: The Solid Waste Management has approached the Lahore District Council for the recruitment of 2,000 sanitary workers on contract in view of manifold increase in its area of operation following the establishment of the city district government.
In the case forwarded to the council for recruitment of new sanitary workers for an average monthly salary of Rs3,500 to Rs4,000, SWM DO Rafiq Jatoi said the number of sanitary workers in the city had not been increased for more than two decades despite manifold increase in waste generation with the increase in population. The area of SWM operations had also increased following the establishment of the CDG as it had to look after the sanitation requirements of the entire district instead of the main city alone.
He pointed out that the number of sanitary workers available with the SWM for the city was far short of requirement in comparison with Karachi and Indian cities Ahmedabad and New Delhi. An average 3,960 tons of waste was being generated in the city daily requiring each of the 6,900 sanitary workers on the SWM payroll to handle 0.56 ton of it. Karachi, on the other hand, was generating an average 6,000 tons of waste daily requiring each of its 14,000 sanitary workers to handle 0.422 tons of it.
Mr Jatoi claimed that sanitary workers in India were handling even lesser waste than those in Karachi. Ahmedabad had 7,000 sanitary workers for handling 1,530 tons of waste generated daily. Delhi had 36,862 sanitary workers for handling 5,500 to 6,000 tons being generated daily.
He said the SWM required 9,383 sanitary workers if worked out according to yardstick applied in Karachi, 24,412 workers on the basis of Delhi standard and 18,657 on the basis of Ahmedabad yardstick. The total strength of SWM sanitary workers would remain below the requirement of all the three cities even after recruitment of another 2,000.
