PESHAWAR, Dec 15: The NWFP government is devising a system of checks for private sector hospitals and clinics and make them dispose of their infectious waste properly through incinerators installed in three public sector hospitals in Peshawar.

"The need to make the private sector hospitals and clinics properly dispose of their hazardous waste has been felt because none of the business concerns being run in the private sector are effectively meeting this obligation," said an official of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), NWFP.

The health directorate and EPA have been directed by the provincial government to discipline the private sector's health facilities in this respect, the official said.

Owners and representatives of private business concerns would be contacted to make them cooperate with the government in its effort to ensure safe disposal of hospital litter. The health directorate and the EPA have been asked to formulate a comprehensive strategy in this regard.

While the waste generated in the three public sector hospitals - Lady Reading, Khyber Teaching Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex - is disposed of through incinerators, the refuse churned out in the private sector health facilities remains unattended.

In the absence of a proper system, their (private sector's) waste ends up in garbage dumps and open places where solid waste is disposed of without adopting proper treatment procedures.

Officials claim that some unscrupulous elements, in connivance with scavengers, are in the illegal business of collecting used syringes and putting them on sale again in the market after repacking.

"The situation poses a threat to people's lives," an official dealing with environmental issues said. Giving fillip to the government's move is the realization that public sector hospitals' incinerators are underutilized.

"It has recently been found that all the three incinerators are not being utilized to their full capacity," said the official. They are being used only to burn the waste of their own hospital.

According to official documents, each incinerator can handle between 50 and 150 kilogramme of waste in an hour. However, a comparative statement showing disposal of waste in each of the three hospitals, prepared by the EPA, reveals that the waste being burnt daily is much less than the per hour capacity of each incinerator.

On being asked by the planning and development department, the EPA is devising a plan to make maximum use of the incinerators by burning the waste produced by smaller health facilities as well.

Health facilities have been identified in and around Peshawar whose waste would be shifted to either of the three hospitals for being incinerated there. A recent official survey reveals that more than 100kg of infectious waste is being produced every day by 10 small health facilities in Peshawar.