In 2016, a Chinese company was awarded a contract for garbage collection in the south and east districts of Karachi at the rate eight times higher than what was being paid to a local company for the same job. But the company failed to perform the task satisfactorily. As if it has a huge amount of dollars, the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board has once again issued an international tender for sweeping, collection and transportation of municipal solid waste. We treat our own janitorial staff badly, and give them wages as low as Rs11,100 per month. Similarly, we used to pay Rs320 per tonne to our own local companies for garbage collection in Karachi while we are willing to pay eight times more to foreign companies.
The recent announcement that the Asian Development Bank has agreed to provide financial assistance of $358.83 million to the Sindh government to support a number of development projects, well explains our dependency syndrome. One of the world’s poorest countries prefers to borrow dollars from abroad for its basic development projects, while simultaneously passes them on to other foreign companies for tasks as ordinary as garbage collection.
Naeem Sadiq
Karachi