LAHORE: The Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC) has yet to clear many areas of heaps of solid waste lying unattended in different parts of the city.

“Considered rather clean city of Pakistan, Lahore has now turned almost into a city of garbage,” Sajjad, of Johar Town, told Dawn.

Aslam, of Shadbagh, also complained about a massive delay in lifting of the waste in the area, demanding that the company immediately pay attention to the issue.

“For the last many days, I didn’t see the presence of the LWMC vehicles, which would lift the waste almost on a daily basis,” he said.

Similarly, Imran Lalika, a member of the public, shared the video online showing heaps of garbage along a road in Shadbagh.

LG secretary plans initiatives to make LWMC efficient

Under the previous plan/arrangement, which remained in force from 2012 to 2020, the LWMC used to get the city’s waste managed through two contractors. However, complaints about poor cleanliness started rising due to the deteriorating condition of the machinery, delays in payment of bills, mismanagement, initiation of inquires as well as fear of the National Accountability Bureau and anti-corruption authorities among senior LWMC officials, repeated transfer of managing directors and other issues, especially during the last two years. This led to disinterest in accomplishing various jobs on the part of contractors, vendors and LWMC officials.

Another major reason was the forensic audit conducted for the period between 2012 and 2020, which reportedly recommended recovery of Rs7 billion from the contractors for allegedly not fulfilling their contractual obligations. On this, the LWMC stopped bills that piled up to over Rs3bn by Dec 31. However, the contractors rejected the audit report and kept pressing the government clear their dues.

In the meanwhile (in December, last year), the government with the help of the police took over the entire machinery and field offices of the contractors, claiming the same as state property under the contract. After removing the contractors, the LWMC started implementing a new waste management model under which it was required to deal with all cleanliness activities directly — at least to the extent of primary waste collection for a certain period. However, in the meanwhile, the LWMC Board of Directors chairman resigned. Soon, two more members resigned.

Finally, the Punjab government gave a task to Local Government and Community Development Department Secretary Noorul Amin Mengal to put the LWMC in the right direction by getting the city cleaned within a short time, especially during the ongoing transition period (from the previous to the current model).

Mr Mengal responded and started making efforts to take important decisions especially related to the procurement of the new machinery, waste containers, and other material. He also held a couple of meetings of the board that finally approved certain proposals seeking machinery worth Rs5 billion, initiation of the bidding process to award secondary waste collection project, rebranding of the company, etc.

Talking to Dawn, Mr Mengal said a comprehensive plan to make the city clean has been introduced that would lead to reducing public complaints.

“Actually the issue at the moment is a severe shortage of waste containers. Previously, the waste heaps were not seen on roads since these were used to be put in the almost 7,000 containers/waste bins. But now, due to the absence of containers, the heaps of garbage are lying on roads, intersections, etc,” he clarified.

He said the company would also be able to get over 900 new dumpers, mechanical sweepers, machines, equipment that would be helpful to quickly collect, transfer and dispose of the solid waste within the shortest time on a daily basis. He said the Turkish contractors, who should have maintained the machinery well, kept carrying out the waste operations with old machinery during the last couple of years. The secretary said the company also plans to recruit 3,000 more workers in near future.

He said the department had also started carrying out special inspections of all waste management companies of Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan, Rawalpindi, Bahawalpur, Gujranwala, and Sialkot.

“The teams constituted responsible for reviewing/scrutinizing utilization of funds released to the companies from the government to ascertain value for money, reviewing audited financial statements to assess whether or not international accounting standards were adopted, inspecting procedures adopted for hiring/firing mechanism for employees and third parties/vendors, reviewing procurement process completed under the law or not, conduct physical verification of the manpower, assets, etc, inspecting monitoring mechanism of vehicles, inspect the management of landfill sites, etc,” he explained.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2021