Punjab’s ring of waste…Hamid Masood

Consumption patterns of a growing population in the context of a high urbanisation rate are contributing to an increase in solid waste generation in Punjab.

The situation is no different for other provinces or low-income countries that are poised to nearly double their waste generation in the coming 25 years. Besides the need to emphasise and adopt reduction in solid waste generation, safe disposal of solid waste is necessary to maintain the quality of air, water and soil which otherwise can be hazardous for our existence.

It has been estimated that Punjab currently generates a little over 1.4 million tons of solid waste every month out of which only 0.2 million tons is safely disposed of leaving about fourteen and a half million tons unsafely left solid waste across the province in a year alone. Adding up non-safely disposed of solid waste over the previous years and forecasting for the coming five years with a population growth rate of 2.5 per cent, there could easily be more than 100 million tons of solid waste lying untreated around the human settlements of Punjab.

The populace of Punjab would be actually living in an ever-thickening ring of solid waste and by all expert estimates their quality of life is going to be very poor. In addition to these estimates, the government itself acknowledges the situation, and the Punjab State of the Environment Report 2023 clearly rates the overall quality of solid waste management system, waste collection, and waste disposal as poor. However, the environmental degradation specifically caused by the poor state of the overall solid waste management system has not been thoroughly evaluated. It is expected that the next report pays due consideration to define the nature of causality connecting the two phenomena.

The legal and policy framework of the province does require for safe disposal of solid waste and local governments have been made responsible for this. However, attempts made to fulfil the policy intention over the past two decades have been ill-planned and half-hearted. At one point during the last decade, there were seven solid waste landfill sites across the province and citizens hoped that in the coming years, each local government of the province would have its own well-planned landfill site. Over time, the number got reduced to only one site for safe disposal of solid waste and announcements for new landfill sites amidst changing legislations over local government systems were made without much headway towards implementation.

The institutional landscape of solid waste management in the province witnessed the most abrupt change in the form of the creation of solid waste management companies. Followed by Lahore, eight more companies have so far been created, the rationale of which remains deluded by efficiency and safety. Their predecessors of solid waste management – local governments – used to manage municipal waste with very limited resources but instead of meeting their resource requirements, new provincially controlled entities were created, and the prevalent local government legislations provided them with the required legal cover.

One is compelled to question the non-provision of resources to local governments whereby such resource provision would have also been in perfect compliance with the constitutional requirement of giving them political, administrative and financial autonomy.

Two phenomena are quite intriguing to follow with respect to the disposal of solid waste in the province – dumping sites and plans for future safe disposal. The former made akin to a landfill site is duly covered by The Punjab Local Government Act 2022 which condones dumping at notified or designated sites. However, the majority of the local governments of the province dump solid waste at sites not owned by them.

Idle and undeveloped land around settlements is used by local governments as dumping sites and for sure without any measure amounting to safe disposal. Ironically, the law treats it as an offence, whether committed by any person or an entity, requiring trial by a court so almost all the local governments at the moment are entities awaiting trial. The latter phenomenon boasts of developing regional landfill sites across the province but without any publicly available information about the province-wide required area for sites, budget, and timelines.

Such a piecemeal approach to development has never served Punjab right and cannot also deliver on the promise of safe disposal of solid waste. Another issue in planning for these regional landfill sites is the availability of alternate sites for waste disposal upon the life completion of planned ones. Amidst fast-occurring urban sprawl across the province, availability and procurement of land are serious challenges.

Integrated solid waste management system is the most recent slogan being used by policymakers and service providers to indicate the intended transformation of the existing system. However, the roadmap towards province-wide transformation is yet to see the daylight. On the one hand, there is the challenge of collecting and managing existing municipal waste whereas inadequate disposal of projected waste may seriously contaminate soil and further deteriorate the air and water quality. Local governments like Municipal Committee Okara are turning their solid waste dumping sites into playgrounds without considering the hazardous nature of this action. Unlike landfill sites that have specially designed vents for gases emanating from the disposed of waste, dumping sites lack any such system thus making them ripe grounds for gas explosion.

Segregation, Treatment, and Disposal (STD) Facility Sahiwal is one example where The Urban Unit has extended provincial-level expertise and the Municipal Corporation Sahiwal has shouldered localised operation and maintenance. Keeping aside the notions of delay and subsequent increase in cost, it can be taken as a benchmark for managing solid waste across the province. Costs and timelines may be worked out along with ensuring the availability of land either through reappropriation of land owned by the local governments or through market purchase.

The next step would be to develop a realistic medium-term financing plan for province-wide facilities. International development partners may be asked to provide technical and financial assistance in a phased manner. Moreover, the provincial government needs to ensure that the operation and maintenance costs of these facilities are duly covered by local governments through provincial transfers till they become self-sustainable.

Solid waste is a reality that we deal with daily. We can keep our houses clean and, to some extent, ensure the cleanliness of our streets, but it is high time we started advocating for and subsequently paying the waste management fee to keep our cities and provinces clean.

Until consumption patterns change and waste segregation occurs at the household level, the government can take the issue of solid waste disposal seriously and deliver on its promise of providing a safe and healthy environment to the citizens.

Courtesy The News