Daily Times

Sir: I would like to draw the attention of Karachi’s municipal authorities towards the deteriorating state of urban cleanliness and waste disposal in our city. Recently, we have heard reports of increasingly large piles of garbage accumulating outside the Karachi University campus, no doubt a health hazard for students aside from being smelly eyesores. All over Karachi there are piles of garbage some of which have become city landmarks because they have been there for so long. Municipal workers arrive intermittently and often will just clear away the latest addition to the mountain of trash so that the garbage that is at the bottom begins to rot and becomes like an outdoor compost heap. If you have the stomach to pay attention you can see garbage fermenting in the lower layers of these trash mountains because it has not been moved in months, sometimes years. I am willing to swear that the pile of refuse at the entrance to the Nursery Market off Shahrah-e-Faisal has not been touched since 2012.

It is amazing that Karachites have not all dropped dead from exposure to the noxious gases and germs that garbage heaps generate. If we want to fix Karachi, before getting into politics let us at least clean the city to the extent that people can talk without swallowing flies and inhaling particulate refuse in the air. Maybe when they can breathe properly people will be more willing to talk.

SYED IMAM

Karachi