PESHAWAR: Announcing a two-month long mass cleanliness campaign for the capital city, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa senior minister for local government and rural development Inayatullah Khan on Monday said the government had planned generation of 10-13 megawatts electricity from solid waste.

“The mass cleanliness campaign will ensure 100 percent cleanliness of Peshawar. Afterwards, we will maintain the cleanliness level at the minimum 90 percent,” he told the ‘guest hour programme’ of the Peshawar Press Club.

Water and Sanitation Services Peshawar (WSSP) chief executive Engineer Mohammad Naeem and general manager (operations) Nasir Ghafoor were also in attendance.

The minister said under the two-month long campaign, around 20,000 tonnes of waste would be disposed of and that the exercise would be managed by the WSSP from its own resources.


Minister says 13MW power will be generated from solid waste


“This time around, the city will be completely cleaned of all the waste,” he said.

Inayatullah Khan said 4,000 workers would take part in the drain cleaning.

He said it was a major exercise, which could not be completed unless the public, media, civil society organisations and corporate sector extended full cooperation to the relevant government agencies.

The minister also spoke about the mass public awareness campaign to be run for the purpose.

He said the government had floated advertisements in national and international media about power generation from solid waste and as a result, several companies showed interest to invest money in it.

“Six companies have so far been shortlisted for the project,” he said.

Inayatullah Khan said the city produced 850-900 tonnes of solid waste daily, which could be used for energy, gas and oil production.

He said the project would take time to execute but it would be a model for the country.

“Solid waste can be turned into gold for Peshawar once the project is complete,” he said.

The minister said keeping in view unhygienic conditions of the city, the government had formed its own company, WSSP, which took over on Sept 15, 2014 and disposed of 75 percent of the city’s solid waste in the next three months compared with 58 percent waste disposed of earlier.

WSSP chief executive engineer Mohammad Naeem said the government had established the company with the basic responsibility of waste cleaning, drinking water supply and sewerage system.

He said there had been chronic accumulation in open pots due to which cleaning of the city was not satisfactory.

“The cleanliness will be kept at reasonable level of sustainability so that overall cleaning did not go below 90 percent and that the company needed the support of the people to achieve targets.

About the supply of clean water, the WSSP chief said around 22 kilometer of rusted pipeline had been replaced in the capital under a USAID-funded project, while tenders for another ADP scheme had been floated.

He said a laboratory has also been established in Hayatabad to test the quality of drinking water and identify the areas, where pipes of drinking waters passed through drains.

“The pipelines of clean water will be separated from drains on priority basis to ensure supply of clean water to people,” he said.

Mohammad Naeem said a proposal for the cleaning/mechanical sweeping of additional roads including Ring Road, removal of solid waste from canals, cleaning of government colonies and relocation of large dumps from within the city had been submitted to the government, which had principally accepted it.

He said land acquisition for solid waste landfill site was underway after which a project of its development would be included in the next year ADP.

“In the long term, mega projects for development of surface flow drinking water supply schemes like Jaba dam, Bara dam and Warsak or Swat river source are being planned,” he said.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2015

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