THE Municipal Corporation Islamabad is a useless set-up, as it has done nothing during the last few years to improve general cleanliness in the federal capital. What the Directorate of Municipal Administration was doing under the Capital Development Authority was comparatively better. The rampant corruption prevailing in the CDA from top to bottom has taken its toll yet a few good individuals were still there and trying to manage things after local government elections and subsequent conversion of DMA into MCI set in.

In all sectors — garbage collection from homes and street cleaning done earlier by DMA staff was abruptly stopped on lame excuses by the new MCI set-up and instead people were forced to buy expensive wheeled garbage collection drums and asked to put them daily outside so that garbage collection could be made.

I don’t understand that when the previous system had been doing fine for the last many decades and people were satisfied with it why was a new system introduced? Was it done to mint money or make people suffer? In our street in sector F-7/1, like other residents, we pay Rs1,000 a month to a garbage collector who comes daily to collect garbage from our home. Streets are cleaned once a month.

Some homes in the sector have not received water from the CDA for a long time owing to broken and rusty pipes. People have to use ground water or pay for tankers. Despite this, the MCI raised property tax and water charges by 200 per cent this year with the permission of the government.

I am at loss to understand where to go for redressal of our complaints?

M. Elahi
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2019