Shazia Khan YCHR-CENTRE FOR RESEARCH AND TRAINING House # 122, St. 3. Officers Colony, Cavalry Grounds, Lahore Cantonment, Pakistan ychr@syberwurx.com Abstract: The paper attempts to address the issue of solid waste management in Pakistan by highlighting the case study of city of Lahore. It looks at the underlying factors that result in failure of the service and brings to light various attempts made to improve the situation by public-private partnerships and franchise services. It’s not only a critical and unbiased analysis of the existing situation but also provides the possible solutions to the issue. Keywords: solid waste, Lahore, franchise, corruption, DFID-UK, public private partnership, sanitary, World Bank Introduction: Executive Summery Solid Waste Management Services is an elusive term for a majority of people of Pakistan and big cities are no exception. However, attempts have been made over the years to shift the municipality-run waste removal services to private operators but none have been successful, primarily because of the a highly `anti-franchise’ attitude by the departments concerned. Legal ambiguity; irrational service fee structure; lack of or in some cases no knowledge of the existing situations; corrupt management; lack of mechanical support; unwanted political interference; faulty planning etc are some of the other reasons that contributed to the overall failure of the system. Why Lahore? The second largest city of Pakistan – Lahore – has been among those cities which have attempted to introduce the franchise system on more than one occasion. With a population increasing a mammoth figure of 7.2 million, the city is surprisingly diverse when it comes to SWM services. According to the officially acknowledged facts the department concerned extends regular waste removal services to 33 percent of the city’s population, while 33 percent are ‘partly’ served while the remaining 34 percent population is not served at all. Of course these are official figures and the people living the ‘regularly served’ localities have a different story to tell and those living in the ‘partly served’ are more familiar with private waste removal operators as compared to the municipality staff. One thing should be kept in mind before we move in any further; even in the cases where the municipality claims of providing ‘complete services’ the concept of door-to-door collection; minimizing the waste or segregation of the waste at source does not exist. By maximum or complete services the department implies that its waste collectors remove waste from formal and informal dumping sites in the particular locality daily as compared to the ‘partly’ served areas where such an activity is carried out either weekly or in some cases as and when needed. One major service provided in the ‘regularly served’ localities is road sweeping, which is done manually in small streets while mechanical sweepers are used for main roads. Surprising it may sound, the ratio of sweeping in Lahore is much higher than many developed countries as most of the main roads in the 33 percent fully served localities are swept daily and in some cases the commercial areas are manually swept even twice a day.  The case study of Lahore is a complex one and much more efforts and space would be required to explain the situation. However, attempt is being made here to present it in a concise manner that would interest a reader not familiar with the region. Some of the issues that are the focus of this paper are the existing situation; the public-private partnership initiatives; the franchise experience; political interference; what can be done. Situation Analysis Lahore – the provincial capital of Punjab, the most populous province of Pakistan – produces around 4000 tons of solid waste daily. According to the official claim half of the waste generated daily or around 2000 tons is lifted by the Solid Waste Management Department of the City District Government of Lahore (CDGL) from formal and informal dumping sites in various localities and shifted to a government-managed dumping site in the outskirts of the city. However, a substantial quantity is simply collected from the affluent neighbourhoods and dumped in the nearby slums unlawfully. The remaining 2,000 tons ends up at roadsides in the form of heaps and breeding grounds for disease or in open drains. Managing Lahore’s waste is certainly not an easy job but it becomes even more difficult when combined with misdirected spending; complete lack of management skills; corrupt and inefficient staff; lack of human and mechanical resources; political interference and lack of will on the part of the department heads to introduce a change. The Solid Waste Management Department (SWMD) of the CDGL has an annual budget of over RS 600 million (US $ 10 million) and the expected income from the SWM service charges is estimated over RS 900 million. However, as against the spending the total amount of fee recovered as service charges was abnormally low at around RS 1.7 million in the fiscal year 2002-2003. The recovery of 1.7 million rupees was, however, the highest amount of service fee recovered since its introduction several years ago. Many factors are cited as the primary reason behind the failure of the municipal government to recover the service fee. One argument is the highly questionable method of collection of fee. Instead of compounding the SWM fee with other utilities, the municipality through the SWMD has a system of door-to-door collection of the fee on a monthly basis with the obvious problem of people declining to pay stating the reason of not being served. At the same time the commercial areas, which are a major consumers as the SWMD ensures twice a day sweeping and regular garbage lifting from the markets, simply don’t pay any fee. There have been incidents where the traders’ unions have not only harassed the SWMD staff but physically harmed those attempting to collect the service charge. The department is no position to take action against the strong traders’ community which incidentally also supports and receives patronage from the present military regime. Thus a huge sum of expected income in terms of service fee from the commercial areas is still a dream.  On the spending side, of the 600 million rupee budget the department spends around 80 percent of the money on paying salaries to the staff and on non-developmental activities. The irony is that of the 6900 sanitary workers employed with the SWMD, more than 50 percent are aged above 50 years and are not in the best physical health to carryout the day to day manual activity. Moreover, a majority of the old-aged staff has applied for retirement from the service as they have completed the mandatory 25-year service for full retirement benefits but the department has no money to pay them off. Thus most of the applications for retirement are pending with the department and this has opened another window for corruption as some elements exploit the situation and extort money from those not willing or able to continue the tough job to forward their cases to the superior officers – as the saying goes in the department, the cash finds its way into many pockets before a deserving employee wins the right to call it a day with full retirement benefits. Apart from the irregularities in the annual spending by the department, it follows a strange service delivery method. For instance, primary collection or collection of the waste at the source of generation is considered the first and foremost step in any effective waste management system. However, it’s a different case in Lahore. The step is not found in the job description of the sanitary worker under the SWMD and nor the department has any special mechanism to accomplish the task. To put it simply, the first step of collection of waste at source is absent in the working model in Lahore. The reason put forward is that it’s too expensive an activity and being a country of the third-world we cannot afford the luxury of door-to-door collection. On the other hand, the department assigns special duties and efforts are made to ensure that roads and several streets from where dignitaries are expected to commute are swept more than once a day. The sweeping ratio of Lahore is far more than many countries of the developing world and it is one sector where we have even left the US far behind which has a tradition of once-a-week road cleaning system. The prevalent environment of corruption has further aggravated the situation as employees waiting for the acceptance of their retirement plea and those with other jobs often bribe their superiors and stay away from work. The going rate for not showing up for work throughout the month and still marked present is 50 percent of the months salary and even if one is honest and present on all the working day up to 10 percent of the salary has to be `surrendered’ to the immediate in charge who holds the authority to mark the employee absent or present. Another burden on the department is a substantial number of Muslim sanitary workers and the female staff. The Muslim employees simply don’t turn up at the work or even if they appear at the duty point, they don’t work as they find working as sanitary staff socially unacceptable and below dignity. On the same account a large number of female staff often sends their brothers or husbands to do the job in their stead. Although, it compensates for their absence, but primarily its illegal and to turn a blind eye to the situation the in charges exhort money from the concerned individuals. Removal of waste from the dumping sites is one responsibility apart from sweeping which the SWMD staff is required to perform. At present the department has 349 specialized vehicles for the removal of waste. The procedure is that a specific number of vehicles are allocated for each of the administrative sub-divisions of the district. The vehicles operators are required to remove the waste collected or dumped on the formal and informal sites by the residents of the said locality or by private waste collectors and shift it to the municipality-managed dumping site on the outskirts of the city. A specific quantity of gasoline is allocated for each vehicle keeping in mind the expected visits from the collection site to the dumping site. The average number of visits each vehicle is expected to make to the dumping site range from four to six. However, the vehicles operators have identified or rather targeted poor localities or slums having no political voice as dumping sites for the waste they remove from the affluent localities or the localities from where not removing waste could create problems for them in the political terms. It’s officially acknowledged that every vehicle makes a maximum of two visits to the dumping site while receiving fuel for at least six trips daily. The fuel thus saved is sold in the black market at a very low price. The situation is not only further deteriorating the already crumbling situation but also increasing environmental hazards by creating more and more informal dumping sites across the city. Public Private Partnership During the past few years several initiatives have been taken both by the public and private sector to find a lasting solution for the ever increasing waste problems but all the initiatives have failed to deliver, primarily because of the inept management and vested interest of the corrupt among the solid waste management department. Among the noted public-private partnerships have been an initiative undertaken by the YCHR-CRT with the financial support of the DFID-UK. Through a consultative process with the SWMD the organization selected a locality in Lahore’s Walled City which was among the neighbourhoods designated as `troubled’ by the department with regards to its operations.  The locality comprised of very narrow streets and highly dense population with very little room to experiment heavy machinery to move the over // 200 tons / of waste generated daily. In addition there was no door-to-door service. The YCHR-CRT took charge of the operations in the area with the SWMD staff with the arrangement that the organization was the manage the operations and work within the existence resources while the DFID-UK provided funds for organization’s management cost and the cost for introducing customized mechanical equipment. Within a year the organization was able to reduce the strength of the staff working in the area from over 120 to below 80 and the level of services increased. The organization addressed the issue of reduction of waste at source and carried out awareness campaigns with the community and at the same time introduced mechanized system of removal of waste. Previously the waste was collected from the informal dumping sites in the locality on animal driven carts and brought to a street wide enough for a heavy vehicle to shift it out of the neighbourhood. The process often involved several hours and one could often encounter carts loaded with waste inching their way out of the neighbourhood as late as noon. The YCHR-CRT team introduced a mechanized vehicle small enough to maneuver in the congested locality and spacious enough to carry substantial quantities of waste. The whole process was revolutionized and the work which previously ended with the day would be over as early as 8am and the vehicles were always available all the time as and when the need arose. Although, the system had shown marked improvement the department was not happy with the situation as the management by the organization had affected the amount of bribe certain officials were generation from the locality. Thus, they made several efforts to end the project, However, it continued for almost three years, primarily because of the success in the operations and secondly by the support of the British High Commission in Pakistan, as most of the department officials were aware of the interest the project had generated among the donor organization. The program ended in 2001 and the management went back to the SWMD. The tragic part is that the level of service dropped drastically in days and it was back to the stage where it was before the YCHR-CRT had stepped in. The area has been designated `troubled’ again as highly vocal residents have been protesting against declining services and have even thrashed the staff in public for poor work. Franchised SWM system Towards the end of year 2002 it had dawned on some senior officials of the SWMD that it was not possible for the department to extend its services to all parts of the city and the only option available was franchise the areas that were not being served. Thus a process of franchising some of the localities was initiated in the first phase with the model that the private contractors would provide door-to-door waste collection and sweeping services while the SWMD would provide them support by shifting the waste thus collected from the collection points to the dump sites. One of the aims was to decentralize the services which could improve the efficiency and reduce the incidence of corruption. The un-served localities were divided into blocks of one thousand households each and many entrepreneurs came up and started operations in areas which had never witnessed an organized system of waste management. By the mid of 2002 the number of houses served by the private SWM operators had increased by 30,000 and had started attracting the attention of many more investors. According to the contract terms, the private operators were granted rights to work in their respective areas for a period of three years and they were to collect the service fee directly from the houses and commercial areas. This meant that the role of the SWMD was reduced to removal of the waste from the waste collection site to the official dumping site and monitoring of the service delivery. The system was not allowed to stand on its feet as certain elements in the SWMD saw its success as a direct threat to their vested interests. Thus a process of creating hurdles in the operations of the private contractors was initiated. The waste removal vehicles which were required to shift waste from the designated sites to the dumping sites at least twice a day would not visit for several days and the increasing odor from the collected waste would enrage the residents and thus they would pressurize the contractor who intern was left with no option but to bribe the vehicle operators to remove the waste. The monitoring officials in their reports to the department heads reported inept services as huge piles of waste was lying of various points but disregarded the pleas of the contractors that the vehicle operators were unable to remove the waste daily. The main issue was that waste containers in those localities had never been filled to their capacity before two weeks and when the process of door-to-door collection started, people stopped dumping the waste in open places and drains with the result that the waste collected on the designated spots daily was often more than what was being gathered their in weeks prior to the arrival of the private operators. The private operators received another set back when the commercial areas refused to pay the service fee but at the same time insisted on receiving the service. The suspension of service in the commercial areas often resulted in threat of physical violence against the sanitary staff of the operator. The department officials, according to the terms of the contract, were to help the contractor in securing the recovery of the amount but several complaints in this regards and requests for legal action against the defaulters were totally disregarded with the result that the contractors started facing financial constraints and were forced to limit their operations to certain areas. Another problem arose with the introduction of the newly elected local bodies as a result of the devolution of power plan by the present government. In the previous system the elected members of the local bodies were solely responsible for the sanitary staff in their constituency and they demanded of the private contractors to ensure the presence of at least three to five sanitary workers at their disposal – a demand not only highly inappropriate but in direct contradiction with the contract agreement with the CDGL. The denial to do so resulted in further trouble. Using their political clout the elected councilors pressurized the residential units in their areas not to pay the service fee and in some streets within the operation areas of the private operators, allowed certain individuals to initiate similar services. The eventual result was that one by one all the private operators opted out of the system and the things which had started showing signs of improvement went back to square one. The irony of the whole scenario is that the politically elected head of the CDGL is willing to find a solution to the problem but nor the members he lead and neither the department is willing to let go the opportunity to make money. The district government head is known to have spent money from his own pocket on certain occasions to hire private operators to strengthen the operations during Eid and other occasions. In one instance he is known to have spent money for the purchase of much needed spare parts to operate the almost dead fleet of waste removal vehicles. During the past one year the CDGL has been trying to invite private contractors for operations in certain localities and for operating waste removal vehicles. Ironic it may sound that during the YCHR-CRT operations in the Walled City, the SWMD experts had termed the mechanized equipment used by the organization to replace the animal-driven carts as inappropriate, but in the tenders for franchise the same equipment is a prerequisite for qualifying as an applicant in the bids. Weary of their previous experience none of the private operators is willing to step in unless a conducive environment is created and more importantly the attitude of the department is changed. Solution The YCHR-CRT has been working with the CDGL on the front and providing all the technical support it needs to implement a viable solution. At present a stage has arrived where the district government head expresses more trust and faith in the advice rendered by the organization as compared to the SWMD.  However, in a complex political state its impossible for a single person or an organization to affect a lasting change. One of the solutions which the YCHR-CRT has designed for the complex situation in Lahore and which has been termed highly appropriate by World Bank experts is the breakup of the services into independent components. It has been suggested that for primary collection, units of 1,000 households be handed over to private operators for a period of three years with the responsibility of collection the waste from the source, meaning door to door service, shifting the waste to the designated points and sweeping the locality. The second chain should consist of private waste removal vehicle operators. The should be responsible for removal of the waste from the collection site to the dumping site and in the future proper waste disposal sites. Each of the six administrative town in the city of Lahore should manage their own dumping and disposal sites while the CDGL should conduct the overall monitoring of the operations. The process of revenue generation have also been simplified. The private operator provides services to the community and collect service charge from the household and pay a fee for the removal of waste from the locality to the dumping site. This way he would have he option of hiring any of the private operators for the service. The waste removal vehicle operators would charge the primary contractors and later sell the waste according to its weight to the dumping site operators. The initial meetings with the World Bank and CDGL were organized by the YCHR-CRT and the three partners agreed to work together to make Lahore’s franchise dream a reality. However, political issues and the increasing security concerns have yet to allow the materialization of the plans. Annexes Composition & Quantity of Solid Waste / Day in Lahore City Description | % Weight | Tons/Day | Vegetable and Fruit Residues | 30.72 | 1182.7 | Paper | 2.70 | 104.0 | Plastic & Rubber | 5.63 | 216.8 | Leaves, Grass, Straws etc. | 20.02 | 770.8 | Rags | 7.45 | 286.8 | Wood | 1.24 | 47.7 | Bones | 1.03 | 39.7 | Animal Waste | 2.35 | 90.5 | Glass | 0.70 | 27.0 | Metals | 0.32 | 12.3 | Dust, Dirt, Ashes, Stones, Bricks etc. | 27.83 | 1071.5 | Unclassified | 0.01 | 0.4 | Total | 100.00 | 3850 |
Composition & Quantity of Organic Waste Description | % Weight | Tons/Day | Vegetables & Fruit Residues | 30.72 | 1182.7 | Leaves, Grass, Straws etc. | 20.02 | 770.8 | Wood | 1.24 | 47.7 | Bones | 1.03 | 39.7 | Animal Waste | 2.35 | 90.5 | Total | 55.36 | 2131.36 |
Equipment Existing in-Operation Description | Quantity | Mazda/Isuzu Truck | 100 | Compactor | 26 | Nissan Arm Roll | 32 | M-Arm Roll | 28 | Mechanical Sweepers | 21 | Loaders | 09 | Dumpers | 24 | Garden Waste & T. Trolley | 85 | Gully Sucker & Volvo Crain | 04 | Chain Bulldozer | 20 | Total | 349 |
Comparison of four major sub-continent cities Population | Square km | Total waste of generated | No. Of S/W | Remarks | Lahore (Pak) 7.0 Million | 1770 Sq. km | 3850 Tons/Day | 6900 | One sanitary worker to handle 0.56 ton | Ahmadabad (India) 3.5 Million | 190.84 Sq. km | 1530 Tons/day | 7000 | One sanitary worker to handle 0.21 ton | Delhi (India) 10.1 Million | 1485 Sq. km | 5500 To 6000 Tons/Day | 36862 | One Sanitary Worker to Handle 0.16 ton | Karachi (Pak) 10.2 Million | ?? | 6000 tons/day | 14000 | One Sanitary Worker to Handel 0.42 ton |
THE JOURNAL OF SOLID WASTE TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT TRANSFER OF COPYRIGHT AGREEMENT Copyright of the article Franchising SWM Services – case study of Lahore is hereby transferred to The Journal of Solid Waste Technology and Management (formerly The Journal of Resource Management and Technology). However, the authors reserve all proprietary rights other than copyright, such as patent rights. ___________________________             Shazia Khan                                                                Executive Director YCHR-CRT    Date: January 14,2004. | 
