GUJRAT: The Gujrat Municipal Corporation plans to privatise the sanitation system after a failure in the collection of garbage heaps from the city since transfer of powers to the elected representatives from the bureaucracy in the local bodies some nine months ago.

The GtMC has been weighing various options to overcome the crises-like situation regarding sanitation, drainage and sewerage systems of the city due to multiple reasons, including that of shortage of staff and machinery for lifting garbage.

According to Mayor Haji Nasir Mahmood, the corporation has decided to award the contract for lifting garbage from the city and for this purpose an advertisement will be published in newspapers hopefully the next week.

He said at the same time it had been working on another option of purchasing heavy compactors for each of the 12 urban union councils of the city. Each compactor had a capacity of lifting at least eight to 10 tons of garbage.

He said he had recently visited various European countries, including Norway, Italy, France and Switzerland, to study their sanitation system.

He said he had also inspected some heavy machinery in this regard after which he had prepared a proposal of purchasing secondhand machinery from the European market.

However, he said an approval from the Punjab government would be needed in this regard and it was being worked out.

Admitting the failure of the corporation, he said there was a shortage of sanitary workers and a ban on new recruitments was a major hurdle in coping with the situation as some 15 more sanitary workers for each UC were required in addition to the existing ones for cleaning of streets and lifting of garbage. He said some 150 people were needed for the cleaning of sewerage, drains and major roads of the city.

He also suggested a complete ban on the use of plastic bags for shopping purposes since these bags were the main cause of choking the sewerage.

He said some new sewerage schemes in the city had been planned for which the Punjab government had approved funds to overcome the problematic drainage system.

Published in Dawn, September 12th, 2017