Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Saqib Nisar’s unending stream of suo motu notices continued this Saturday, when he demanded that Karachi be made “clean and tidy within a week”. This happened during a hearing of a citizen’s rights case concerning Sindh’s water and sewerage problems in the Supreme Court’s (SC) Karachi registry. The Karachi authorities have been struggling to find a solution to the city’s garbage problems for years. Though there is no exact measure of how much trash the city generates daily, Karachi’s 21.2 million citizens leave tonnes of trash on the city streets every day. As a consequence, heaps of trash have now become hard to avoid in Karachi. They are not only an eyesore, but they also serve as breeding grounds for flies and other vermin that endanger public health. On top of that, they can also cause tragic accidents. For example, last year, a garbage fire in Lyari killed three children. Taking all this into account, there is no question that Karachi’s trash problem needs to be resolved. However, is the way the honourable CJP is going about it really the way to do this? Firstly, after years of accumulating tonnes of trash for years, is it even possible to make Karachi’s 3780 square kilometre area garbage free within a week? The motive behind the CJP’s suo motu becomes more unclear because he questioned the Karachi mayor over the state of the city, and not representatives from the District Municipal Corporations (DMC), who work under the provincial government. Furthermore, it was former Sindh CM Qaim Ali Shah who had asked local governments to outsource lifting of garbage to private contractors in 2016. Had the CJP sought the advice of experts in seeking solutions to clean-up Pakistan’s biggest metropolis, he would have been told that the non-biodegradable plastic bags that are thrown onto the streets every day are a major issue. These bags clog up Karachi’s sewerage system and pollute its beaches. Banning such plastic bags is also a municipal and provincial issue but the CJP can certainly direct the authorities in this direction. This would have done far more to fix Karachi’s trash problems than summoning the city’s mayor in court. Waste management is an issue that requires long term planning, not just to tackle the trash problem, but also to ensure that unfettered urbanization taking place in this city is better regulated. * Published in Daily Times, March 19th 2018.