While the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s (KMC) crackdown on individuals and businesses disposing of waste in public spaces is a step in the right direction, it raises several important concerns. How can the KMC effectively enforce this initiative when public garbage bins are scarce throughout the city? In many areas, residents and businesses are left with no choice but to dispose of waste on streets due to the lack of proper waste disposal infrastructure. Moreover, while businesses such as restaurants and hotels are being issued notices, there is little mention of the city’s plastic recycling system, which could have helped mitigate waste disposal in the first place.
Where are the resources to encourage proper waste segregation and disposal? Without clear alternatives for waste disposal, enforcing fines or imprisonment for littering seems futile. For such measures to be effective, the KMC must prioritise improving public waste management infrastructure, including increasing the number of public garbage bins and ensuring the availability of a sustainable waste segregation system. Otherwise, such efforts might remain merely symbolic.
Khizar hussain
Karachi
