Heaps of garbage in various areas of the city lying unattended for many days, are posing serious threats to the health of the citizens. The District Municipal Corporations (DMCs) have failed to timely dump the garbage at landfill sites. The heaps of garbage can be seen in different areas of all five districts of the city, which included various union councils of Layari, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Saddar, Liaquatabad, Nazimabad and Korangi.
During a visit to many city areas on Friday, this correspondent came to know that the heaps of garbage had been lying unattended for the last many days. "We have no funds to carry out our routine work. We are taking fuel on credit to run the vehicles for lifting garbage from area and dumping at the landfill sites," said an official at DMC South office.
Although, the city's landfills have the capacity to absorb most of the daily waste produced by the city, hardly 40 percent of the waste is collected at a time due to lack of resources and poorly administered collection and disposal system with the result that much of the city's waste goes un-collected for long periods. It was also witnessed that plastic and polyethylene bags, rotten food, domestic garbage, syringes other hospital waste had been left unattended at sea beaches.
Meanwhile, the rain emergency plan of Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) is set to undergo a crucial test whether it is ready to respond to the monsoon spell. The KMC evolved its rain emergency plan to remain vigilant during the monsoon to respond to the civic challenges that may arise in the wake of seasonal deluge across the city, but its reliance is on "faulty" machineries. Sources said that special funds should be provided to the departments concerned to make all machinery operational; otherwise the citizens will have to suffer again.