GUJRAT: The fleet of the Tehsil Municipal Administration’s (TMA) sanitation branch has received three latest mechanical compactors and 65 containers to collect and dispose of solid waste of the city.

With the addition of the latest machinery worth Rs14.3 million, the TMA is now able to dump the garbage in a better way. The earlier method of manually collecting the solid waste from various parts of the city and then dumping it to the site located near Sheikh Sukha village along Sargodha Road was considered ineffective.

The TMA would dump the solid waste through open tractor-trolleys and Mazda dumpers that often caused leakage/spillover of the garbage on the city roads.

Earlier, the TMA had 16 trolleys, seven dumpers and seven hydraulic Suzuki vans. The compactors would be enough to collect and dump the garbage being produced daily.

Around 210 tons of garbage is being produced in Gujrat city daily and the TMA could manage to collect and dump 160 ton. Officials working in the sanitation branch said that with the addition of the machinery, the civic agency would be able to enhance its capacity to dump more solid waste.

An official told Dawn that Pervaiz Elahi during his stint as the Punjab chief minister had allocated funds to equip Gujrat TMA’s solid waste wing with modern machinery back in 2007. He said some of the machinery had been purchased in 2007 however soon after the PML N government took over, further funds for this project had been blocked. Now the provincial government has provided funds in the current fiscal year.

TMA Administrator Irfan Ali Kathia said each compactor could collect at least eight ton solid waste in one go and the garbage of the city was being shifted to the dumping site through these compactors, whereas 65 containers had been installed at different locations.

He said at least 100 more such containers were required as it was easy to transfer the garbage from these containers to the compactor.

He said local businessmen would be asked to provide containers each of which costs Rs17,000.

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2016