LAHORE, April 7: The Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC) has allegedly ignored the northern and central parts of the city in terms of cleanliness activities, drawing a line of discrimination between the posh and unprivileged localities.

The LWMC was registered as an autonomous body during the tenure of the former chief minister Shahbaz Sharif to transform the provincial capital as one of the ‘cleanest cities in the world’ through provision of customized solutions, ensuring sustainable, safe, clean, and green environment in association with the Lahorites and private partners.

Sources told Dawn that incompetent senior officials of LWMC perhaps forgot their organization’s vision and objectives as they divided Lahore into two parts, separating posh and poor localities in the first place.

“They have divided the city into two parts from its main artery, the Ferozepur Road. The localities located on the right side of the Ferozepur Road (Kasur-Lahore Road) are included in Zone-1 and those on the left side are marked as Zone-2,” a senior official said.

He said since the Zone-1 comprises most of poor localities (city’s central and northern parts), the LWMC completely ignored these and left the residents to face the worst cleanliness situation.

“You can see many polluted residential areas such as Chungi Amar Sidhu, Sitara Colony, Pull Bandayawala, Muhammadpura, Firdaus Park, Khan Colony, Shaukat Town, Ghazi Road, Naseerabad, entire slum areas of Gulberg, Mughalpura, Harbanspura, Ghaziabad, Kotli Peer Abdul Rehman, Garhi Shahu, Gawalmandi and many others. Heaps of waste is found at every corner, streets and roads in these areas,” the official said.

Defying its own policy, he said the LWMC continued focusing on the Zone-2 that was consisted of most of posh localities, including Johar Town, Township, Khyaban-i-Jinnah Road, Canal Road and Raiwnd Road.

“Entirely opposite is the cleanliness situation in these posh localities where important government offices and the route leading to the residence of the former chief minister also exist in this zone,” the official said.

He said it was surprising even for most of officials that the LWMC administration was continuously ignoring Zone-1 localities despite making agreements with two Turkish companies for improving cleanliness through modern machines/equipments.

Some residents of Kotli Peer Abdul Rehman, a residential locality near Shalamar Garden, said they had never witnessed any serious efforts from the staff of the company concerned for cleaning their streets and roads.

LWMC General Manager (Operations) Khalid Majeed admitted the poor cleanliness situation in Zone-1, mainly the northern part of the city. “We have poor infrastructure in the city’s northern localities. We are trying our best to improve cleanliness arrangements, but the dilapidated condition of roads/streets and poor sewerage/drainage system was the main hurdle in our work,” he claimed.

He said the Turkish company (Al-Bayrak) working in Zone-1 had been asked to bring more equipment and other necessary articles in order to improve the cleanliness condition.

The official said that dozens of localities in Zone-2, including Multan Road, Wahdat Road, near Muslim Town, Bhati, Mohni Road and Ravi Road, were also facing similar problems.

He said it seemed that the LWMC was established only to clean the city’s posh areas.