IF the current political leadership fails to fix Karachi’s burgeoning waste disposal problem, a snapshot of this city in a few years could easily show it as being overrun with filth and disease. If truth be told, smelly garbage mounds lining open sewers are a common sight in certain city districts. According to a report last week, Karachi generates at least 13,000 tonnes of daily trash; clearly, cleaning up the backlog of years of waste in addition to collecting everyday garbage is not only a colossal task but one that is near impossible without robust municipal intervention. Persistent government failure to clean up Karachi has resulted in a gargantuan solid waste management crisis, one that is attributed to flawed governance plans, corruption and inadequately managed resources. Since taking over waste management responsibilities from the KMC in 2014, the PPP-led Sindh government has not been able to meet the challenge. More recently, outsourcing garbage disposal to contractors and Chinese companies has proven expensive and unsustainable. In fact, it has failed to yield visible results. What’s more, environmental decline has contributed to rising disease prevalence — even the provincial task force on polio eradication has warned the Sindh chief minister that increased polio prevalence is linked to uncollected garbage. Despite such counsel, the authorities continue to govern through profit-making arrangements with foreign companies rather than strengthen civic institutions. The provincial government’s performance is characteristic of a grossly ineffective authority limited to rally rhetoric, championing legislative bills and outsourcing governance. Clearly, this should serve as an eye-opener for voters desirous of a clean, sustainable future.

For an effective waste-management ecosystem to function as in other democracies, the city government should be given space and resources to govern responsibly. That said, municipal efforts to curb the city’s overflowing garbage should be complemented by other city stakeholders’ participation. Only if voters make waste disposal a key political election issue will matters improve.

Published in Dawn, April 9th, 2018