Punjab Chief Minister, Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif has said that solid waste management and provision of a healthy atmosphere to the people is the priority of the government and effective measures are being taken for this purpose. He said that negotiations are being held with a number of local and foreign companies, while steps are also being taken for improving the existing system of solid waste management.
He issued instructions for setting up a special committee headed by Chief Secretary for establishing solid waste management units in all cities of the province and improvement of technical expertise in this regard. The committee will formulate and submit a comprehensive roadmap with regard to solid waste management within three weeks.
He was addressing a meeting to review performance of Urban Unit and Solid Waste Management Department at Chief Minister's Secretariat, here on Friday. Chief Secretary Punjab, Chairman Planning and Development, Secretary Local Government, Commissioner and DCO Lahore, Director General LDA, Managing Director Solid Waste Management, Project Director Urban Unit as well as officers concerned were present.
The Chief Minister said that all available resources are being utilised for solid waste management and provision of a clean atmosphere to the people. He said that he was deeply impressed with the cleanliness conditions in Mashhad during his visit to Iran and it is his desire that all cities of Punjab should present the same clean look.
He said that sanitary conditions in cities throughout the province are pathetic and heaps of garbage can be seen everywhere in the provincial metropolis. He said that situation in other cities is not different. He said that performance of Solid Waste Management Department with regard to maintenance of sanitary conditions in Lahore is unsatisfactory.
He said that despite payment of more than one billion rupees in salaries to the officials of the department and availability of more than eight thousand sanitary workers, the city has not been rid of the piles of garbage. He said that the main reason for this sorry state of affairs is absence of sanitary workers, existence of a mafia in the department and lack of required technical expertise. He said that negotiations are being held with the local and foreign companies for the improvement of the existing system.
However, capacity-building and increasing technical expertise within available resources and provision of better facilities to the people is the responsibility of Solid Waste Management Department. He said that wastage of resources can not be allowed and the department will have to take measures on emergent basis for clearing the cities of solid waste and removing garbage from all areas of the provincial metropolis.
Earlier, Managing Director Solid Waste Management apprised the meeting of the performance of the department. Project Director Urban Unit said that Mashhad Municipality has trained ten officials of Solid Waste Management of different cities of Punjab while the training programme of ten more officials in October has been evolved. He said that there is a wide scope of medium and long-term co-operation between Mashhad Municipality and Punjab government in solid waste management sector.
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