The city of Lahore is again becoming a city of garbage in recent days. Earlier, thanks to the Turkish contractors’ work, though very expensive and not a model worth making an example of, the city streets and roads would present a pleasant look. Solid waste’s efficient collection, transpiration, and recycling or dumping would be done on a regular basis. Now, it seems the sanitary workers have disappeared from the roads. The clean Lahore regime dates back to 2010 when then government launched the modern solid waste management system by establishing a Solid Waste Management Company (LWMC) under section 42 of the Companies Ordinance 1984 at the place of the City District Government of Lahore’s solid waste management chapter. The LWMC, instead of coming up with its own efficient and cheap system of waste management, outsourced the entire operations to two Turkish contractors – Albayrak and Ozpak. From time to time, their contracts were extended. Under the agreement, the contractors were to hand over their entire machinery to the LWMC. The contractors are neither ready to hand over their aging machinery to the company nor are ready to undertake waste management till Dec 31 when the contract will expire.When the contractors began work back in 2010, they put in place new machinery. In return, they were showered with huge funds. The contractors brought a number of new machines to keep the city clean right from waste collection to dumping. The company also built landfill sites at Lakhodair.The Buzdar government is not ready to treat Lahore exceptionally. The approach must be lauded. Why only Lahore should get the royal treatment at the expense of other cities? Also, residents are not ready to be taxed for extra cleanliness and waste management collections. The government has neither extended the agreements with contractors nor released payments to them. The reason is that an audit is undergoing and until its completion, payments have been withheld. The sanitation situation is likely to worsen in the times to come, especially at the time when the LWMC, which lacks adequate machinery, will start performing the waste-management-related jobs directly from January 1, 2021. All stakeholders – the LWMC and contractors – should sit together to sort out the issues. The government must come up with a payment schedule. The city of 12 million should not suffer anymore. Similarly, other cities and towns, especially rural localities, must get cleaner looks. *