Call to build two waste-to-energy plants in Karachi

Karachi has the potential to easily build two waste-to-energy plants at its landfill sites in Jam Chakro and Gond Pass, and these plants could safely consume at least 2,000 tons of waste out of the total of 12,000 tons of garbage the city generates daily.

Speakers of the conference said that the waste collection and disposal system was nowhere to be seen in Karachi as municipal governance of the city was heading towards a virtual breakdown owing to sheer neglect on the part of successive governments.

They said per person daily waste generation in Karachi ranged between 0.37 kg and 0.95 kg, which was quite manageable given the international standards of waste management systems.

Mehfooz Qazi, director of alternative energy at the Sindh Energy Department, said Nepra had already issued upfront tariff to every province for an up to 50-megawatt waste-to-energy plant, as this incentive would serve well to attract the private sector to invest in the waste management system of Karachi.

Managing Director Rawalpindi Waste Management Company (RWMC) Dr Rizwan Ali Sherdil said that his company had been established in 2014 and so far it had achieved its basic task of a 100 per cent collection of waste generated in Rawalpindi, and for the purpose the city had been divided into 10 zones.

Shah Jahan Mirza, MD of Private Power & Infrastructure Board (PPIB) said that with the new power plants established at Port Qasim in Karachi and in Sahiwal, coal-based power generation still stood at eight per cent of all the electricity generated in the country.

He said the PPIB had always done its best to ensure that all coal-based power plants being established in Pakistan complied with provincial, national, and international environmental standards.

Mirza said that owing to efforts of the Sindh government, large shopping and retail centres in Karachi had done away with the use of polythene bags, and now they had been promoting especially manufactured fabric shopping bags among their customers.

He said that being associated with Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), he had initiated the CPLC Neighbourhood Care Programme in his residential locality near Hill Park.

The provincial minister said that over the course of the last several years, he had been invited by the concerned residents of areas like DHA, Clifton and KDA Scheme No. 1, requesting him to replicate the CPLC Neighbourhood Programme in their areas. “But I have always advised them to take the initiative and have to do it on their own as nobody from the outside could ever come to their rescue,” he said.