Inept civic leaders and erring citizens

Just look around the Rawalpindi city. Each vacant plot and street in the residential areas has piles of trash. Residents of the Supreme Court Colony and surrounding localities have expressed abhorrence over the transformation of Darul Aman More into a dumping site.

They lament the futility of the city authorities for not having a concrete plan for waste management. They say the RWMC guys generally don’t provide bags to the people to put their household waste in them. Although there is a system of collecting garbage daily from every locality, but the waste management company’s vehicles have no fixed time to collect the garbage, therefore lots of bags kept outside the houses start decomposing.

Even the street sweepers employed by them are not punctual in their duty. They are daily seen raising the dust in the streets when parents are taking their kids to the school and when the market shops are open. Cleanliness is responsibility of everyone, but the civic body is responsible for delivering on many fronts.

Waste management company’s sweepers just take away the lighter stuff and never try to remove dirt, which pollutes the air. Residents throw garden waste on roads or on vacant plots. The sweepers say it is not their duty to lift such waste.

At times residents pay extra for getting such waste disposed of. Even then it is collected and burnt at some isolated place. These sweepers are often seen segregating the garbage and separating some items for sale. Our civic leaders are supposed to lead by example. They should personally check things on the ground, but nearly all are big guns. They hold durbars and listen to problems, but do not solve any. They are not accountable to anyone.

Although RWMC has placed a sufficient number of garbage containers in the city to improve cleanliness, city residents don’t throw their waste in the right places i.e. garbage containers. Cleanliness is a personal issue, but ends up in public. Before we expect our city to be neat, clean and health worthy, we should assess our role in it.

If we as a citizen take care of the cleanliness, the public, too, will take care of it. How responsible we are while disposing of used bottles, wrappers and poly bags etc. If these are discarded in garbage containers meant for the purpose, then major part of keeping the city clean is complete. City authorities need to mobilize the city dwellers to keep their city clean. The people usually are in a habit to keep their homes clean and throwing waste outside. Lack of punitive action against those who throw waste in the street and public places has aggravated the situation.