Kacha Jail Road becomes a waste dump

LAHORE :Delay in lifting of waste by OZ-Pak, one of the Turkish contractors of Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC), has turned the newly-constructed Kacha Jail Road into a dump zone, which is causing serious trouble for the citizens and local residents.

One can witness heaps of waste on both sides as well as in the middle of the newly-constructed Kacha Jail Road. OZ-Pak, which is responsible for lifting the waste from this area, is only running one shift due to which waste remained on this road all the day, residents said, adding in routine they didn’t come to clean the road for several days.

Earlier, the General Manager (Operations) Oz-Pak while talking to the scribe on phone said, he was not bound to answer media questions. He asked the scribe to contact LWMC for questions. The LWMC Senior Manager said the company had already fined Oz-Pak heavily for negligence.

Local residents said there was no mechanism of door-to-door waste collection from the area due to which residents as well as shopkeepers threw waste bags in the middle of the road and around the only skip on the road, surrounded by heavily populated residential localities. Shahid Iqbal, a shopkeeper, said usually waste bags placed by locals remained on the road’s divider all day as the waste-lifting vehicle arrives the area in the evening or at night. He said as majority of people in the vicinity are poor and lower middle class, so the company is not interested in cleaning the area.

Mehmood, another local, said waste-lifting from the area always remained a problem. He said the situation however improved a little after construction of Kacha Jail Road and LWMC sweepers as well as Turkish company’s vehicles started coming to the area for cleaning. “Though they didn’t come on inside roads, they clean the main road daily at night,” Ishfaq Rana, another local resident said. Locals have appealed to the chief minister to take notice of delay in waste-lifting from the area and ensure timely cleaning as in nearby posh areas.