Chinese firm's contract to lift garbage from Karachi's District West restored

KARACHI: The Sindh government has renewed the contract of a Chinese firm to collect municipal trash from Karachi’s District West after the firm guaranteed that it would carry out its responsibilities effectively, The News reported on Wednesday.

With Chief Secretary Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah in the chair, the decision was taken at the 12th meeting of the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) at the Sindh Secretariat.

The government had previously revoked the contract about a year ago after receiving complaints that the Chinese firm Hangzhou Jinjiang had failed to discharge its responsibilities in the district. The contract has been renewed on the assurance of the firm and in light of the arbiter appointed by the government to resolve the dispute.

Maintaining that all the firms’ assigned responsibilities in this regard were under a strict obligation to collect garbage, the chief secretary said no laxity would be accepted in the task of disposing of municipal waste from the city.

Read more: Where does Karachi’s garbage go?

Moreover, services of an independent audit firm should be hired for making payments in a transparent manner to the Chinese firms against their municipal waste disposal services, he said, adding that the Chinese firms were responsible to do municipal waste disposal work in four districts of Karachi.

He added that a progress report on the work done by them should be presented to the next meeting of the SSWMB. 

The chief secretary also directed that tenders should also be released for contracting the services of firms for doing garbage disposal work in the remaining two districts of Karachi, i.e. Central and Korangi.

The meeting constituted three committees for monitoring the performance of the SSWMB and related development and procurement affairs.

The newly appointed Karachi administrator, Iftikhar Ali Shalwani, noted that the performance of the SSWMB had to be improved for ensuring cleanliness in the city.

The meeting also approved the SSWMB’s annual budget of over Rs6 billion for the fiscal year 2020-21.