Chinese firm’s contract to collect garbage in District West restored

The Sindh government has restored the contract of a Chinese company to collect municipal waste in Karachi’s District West after the firm held out an assurance it would do its work diligently.

The decision to this effect was reached at the 12th meeting of the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) at the Sindh Secretariat with Chief Secretary Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah in chair.

The government had rescinded the contract about a year ago after receiving complaints that the Chinese company had failed to discharge its responsibilities in the district.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

The chief secretary said no slackness would be tolerated in the task of disposing of municipal waste from the city as all the firms assigned responsibilities in this regard were under a strict obligation to collect garbage.

He said the 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. The chief secretary said Chinese firms were responsible to do municipal waste disposal work in four districts of Karachi, and a progress report on the work done by them should be presented to the next meeting of the SSWMB.

He 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, said 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.