Daily Times

Karachi: Sindh High Court on Tuesday adjourned hearing of Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s (MQM-P) petition for devolving Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) functions and funds to Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) till September 7.

The petition came up for hearing before a bench of Sindh High Court. As the petitioner counsel Barrister Farogh Naseem was not available to plead the case, the court adjourned hearing of the petition till September 7.

It is to be mentioned here that MQM-P chief Farooq Sattar, Karachi Mayor Waseem Akhtar and others submitted in their petition that the SSWMB failed to perform its duties of collecting and disposing garbage in the city and instead outsourced its functions to a Chinese firm.

The petitioners submitted that the staff of the district municipal corporations was inducted in the board and handed over to the Chinese firm instead of using the workforce under the existing structure of DMCs present.

They submitted that constituting the waste management board was illegal in presence of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) and DMC. The board’s failure to remove garbage from the city resulted in citizens getting affected by several diseases. They also sought audit of the SSWMB and transfer of its funds to local government.

During earlier hearings, the petitioner’s counsel Farogh Naseem maintained that the SC had also taken exception over SSWMB’s role and function, and requested the court to dissolve the board and transfer its powers to the respective DMCs.

He maintained that the apex court had observed that running a parallel organisation to perform the same function leads to bad governance and reflects a lack of responsibility and accountability.

The counsel added that the court had ordered for the ‘experiments’ to end now and dissolve the non-functional board that has never performed by transferring its functions to the local bodies, in accordance with the rules of business.

The exercise, the court had ruled, would ameliorate citizen’s problems and will also save the Sindh government a lot of public money which it is a trustee of.

Published in Daily Times, August 16^th 2017.