KOHAT: Local people and business circles here have criticised the new Turkish Water Supply and Sanitation Company (WSSC) for its failure to lift the piles of garbage from the city areas.

When contacted, WSSC human resource department director Mr Afique said that though they had formally taken over the task of cleanliness in the city from TMA five months ago, the needed machinery was yet to arrive.

He said that following public criticism of no action on their complaints a new system of forwarding them to the manager concerned was being introduced to address the issues quickly.

Answering a question, he said that after 2:00pm from Saturday till Monday morning it was holiday and the collection points could not be washed.

He supported his argument by saying that the same practice was followed during the time of the tehsil municipal administration (TMA).

Tajir Action Committee president Haji Abid said that in the beginning the company had claimed to remove all the garbage twice a day unlike TMA which did not perform its job for months, but the situation was still appalling.

The four major points in the city always remain full of garbage emitting stinking smell. The claims of inducting 500 sweepers with sufficient machinery for cleaning the whole city have not materialised as yet. WSSC had announced that the garbage points would be washed with chemicals, but they are being left as it is with decades-old leaking bins.

Residents said that the Bazaar-i-Mustafa and women college chowk were the two major sites where the dirt spilled out from the small containers and spread on the road. Ironically, the college area is the hub of handcart owners selling fruit and vegetable close to the iron dustbin without any cover.

Garhi Behram Chowk is another place where the pedestrians and vehicles have to cross the waste from three sides. The residents have demanded immediate steps to ensure cleanliness in the city.

90 SUSPECTS HELD: The police arrested 90 suspects and seized a big quantity of weapons during an operation in the city and its adjoining areas on Saturday.

The operation was carried out in the main bazaar, hotels, inns, residential plazas, Kaloo Banda, Garhi Jaat, Khwar Garhi, Hafizabad, Qureshabad and Miniabad.

The suspects were shifted to the city police station for interrogation. The arms recovered included two small machineguns, three rifles and 17 pistols besides three kilogrammes of hashish.

Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2017