KARACHI, Oct 18: The city government's much publicized cleanliness campaign, which concluded recently, has failed to yield desired results as most of the areas in the metropolis still remained littered with garbage.
It seems that the 10-day campaign, launched on October 5, was confined to a few areas which comprised posh localities and generally appeared neat and clean.
Conditions in the old city areas and suburbs remained unchanged. Heaps of garbage, overflowing gutters and choked sewerage system may be noticed elsewhere in these areas.
For instance, Burnes Road and the locality housing the Sindh Secretariat are still littered with filth and garbage and it seems that political animosity between the Sindh and city governments contributed greatly to the failure of the cleanliness campaign in these areas.
An area resident said that the garbage dumped at a particular place close to the Sindh Secretariat was not removed even during the campaign despite the fact that it was there for the past many months. "There were no signs of the campaign having been launched in this area. Foul smell from this dump continues to prevail, creating unhygienic conditions in the whole locality," he added.
Similar situation is visible in Lyari, Orangi, Baldia, Keamari and some other areas with no visible improvement having been brought by the campaign.
Interestingly, the city government, town administrations and UC administrations all had been claiming that hundreds of tonnes of garbage had been lifted every day during the campaign. If the claims of individual UCs is credible, it would mean that more than 30,000 tonnes of garbage had been lifted every day during the campaign as against the 8,000 per day garbage generated in the metropolis.
A city government official also ridiculed the claims, saying that millions of rupees had been wasted in the name of campaign.
It is learnt that even the posters relating to the campaign could not be pasted in the city and remained dumped in the city government secretariat till the last day of the drive. -PPI