KOHAT: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has approved a project to establish a garbage recycling plant in Kohat at a cost of Rs40 million.

District development advisory committee chairman MPA Ziaullah Bangash said this while speaking at a ceremony of handing over keys of two tractors with trolleys to the tehsil municipal administration, Kohat, here on Sunday. He hoped that with the provision of the tractors the TMA’s performance would improve to timely remove the garbage and keep the city clean.

He said that Minister for Local Bodies Inayatullah Khan had approved the tractors during his visit to the district. He said that the minister had also set aside more funds for such projects.

Chief municipal officer Mohammad Shoaib and Kohat district president of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Hamayun Pehlwan were also present on the occasion.

Sources said that a big amount of funds allocated earlier for Solid Waste Management Project had gone down the drain. The provincial urban development board had purchased 80 kanals on Bannu road for the project, but it could not take off.

The plan was to collect garbage from the whole city and recycle it for making fertiliser. The provincial government had also appointed full staff and paid them salaries for many years though the project was never executed.

Similarly, Rs120 million released by the Asian Development Bank in 1992 for improvement of sanitation system and construction of natural fertiliser recycling plants had been rendered useless. Sources said that the treatment plant completed with a cost of Rs25 million was never made operational even for a single time during past 12 years.

The aim was to keep the city clean by upgrading the existing system to cope with problems created by increasing population for next 15 years.