KARACHI: Sindh Local Government Minister Saeed Ghani on Saturday contested certain media reports, which questioned his ministry’s claim that offal of more than a million sacrificial animals was lifted by the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board from four districts of Karachi, saying the figure was more conservative than what was claimed by the authorities in Lahore and Peshawar.

“I stand by my yesterday’s statement and today that figure has further improved to 41,980 metric tonnes of the offal of sacrificial animals that our staff has lifted in the past three days of Eidul Azha,” said Mr Ghani while addressing a press conference at the Pakistan Peoples Party’s media cell.

He said the figure of the offal could roughly be calculated in terms of sacrificial animals as more than one million, which included partial disposal of offal from the limits of District Municipal Corporation Central. He added the DMCs in Karachi Central and Korangi districts had not yet fallen in the ambit of the SSWMB’s garbage lifting operations.

He said a certain private news channel launched a campaign against his ministry and the SSWMB claiming how offal of a million animals could be lifted when the citizens had sacrificed just a little more than 300,000 animals during Eidul Azha.

He referred to the recent criticism by some local leaders of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf about the number of sacrificial animals.

“I would like to suggest to Khwaja Izharul Hasan of the MQM to ask the chairmen of DMCs Central and Korangi, who both belonged to Khwaja Sahib’s party, to know what figure they had collected about sacrificial animals in those districts.”

He said his office had received the figure from DMC Central where its chairman informed the ministry that some 437,000 animals had been sacrificed during the Eid days just in that single district.

Answering the criticism offered by PTI’s Firdous Naqvi, Minister Ghani offered a detailed comparison of Karachi with Lahore and Peshawar, which were now being ruled by the PTI’s provincial governments.

Referring to the latest census figures, Mr Ghani said his figures for Karachi were conservative when one could see that out of three million housing units in the teeming metropolis one third of them sacrificed one million animals during Eid days.

“The situation is much interesting when we see officials in Lahore claim that 1.75 million housing units there produced 44,000 metric tonnes of offal, which means 60 per cent of the city’s population had sacrificed an animal. And what makes everyone spellbound is the figure that has arrived from Peshawar where its authorities have claimed that they have lifted 9,500 metric tonnes from a city of 236,000 housing units, which means 97pc of the population was involved in sacrificing animals.

“The PTI’s leadership should first see inwards to digest such spectacularly unacceptable figures. Ours are entirely fact-based and conservative figures,” said the minister.

He said the offal would have been even more in weight in Karachi as his figures did not include the offal lifted in the remits of six cantonment boards in the city and partly from Karachi Central and Korangi districts.

“I concede that we must have overlooked certain aspects of the whole operation, but on the average, our staff have worked hard and kept the city clean during Eid.”

He also conceded that the Eid operation had affected the routine garbage lifting operation in the city for which “we are soon going to launch a cleanliness week to remove the backlog”.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2018