Sharjeel orders dismissal of Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s absentee employees

The Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) will assume the garbage disposal responsibilities in Hyderabad today (Tuesday) instead of waiting till the next month due to the problematic issue of trash collection in the second largest city of the province after the torrential monsoon rains.

This was stated by Sindh Information and Transport Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon on Monday while chairing a meeting at the camp office of the Hyderabad deputy commissioner. The meeting was attended by the officials of the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (HMC).

Hyderabad will become the second city of Sindh after Karachi where the SSWMB would perform trash collection services. Earlier, the waste management board was supposed to take over the municipal waste disposal affairs in Hyderabad on September 9, 2022.

Memon, who is also the provincial government’s focal person for rain emergency in Hyderabad, asked the officials concerned to dismiss from service the municipal staffers who had been absent from their duties without any valid cause.

He said that new recruitment should take place after dismissing from service the absentee municipal staffers. He added that the inefficient working of municipal agencies gave a bad name to the Sindh government.

The information minister said the HMC should utilise the services of all its staffers to keep Hyderabad neat and clean. He was of the view that municipal workers should collect waste and dispose it of at the designated collection points of the SSWMB established for the purpose.

The HMC officials should show zero tolerance against any municipal staffer who had not been diligently performing his duties, he said and announced that in the second phase, the SSWMB would start working in the rural areas of Hyderabad.

An executive engineer of the HMC informed the meeting that there were around 11,000 municipal staffers in Hyderabad and merely 400 out of them had been working while 700 had been drawing their salaries without performing any duty. To this, Memon asked the Hyderabad deputy commissioner to look after the affairs of the HMC and take to task the erring officials.