QUETTA: Sahib Dad, a resident of Mumtaz Town in Quetta, has been facing difficulties for the last many years due to the accumulation of garbage outside his house.

“I have filed complaints many a times at the Metropolitan Corporation Quetta with regard to the piles of garbage outside my residence, but the authorities have failed to attend the long-pending issue. The filth, besides creating foul smell, has given birth to many diseases and is a health hazard for all”, said Sahib Dad.

While expressing anguish, another area resident Haji Faizullah has said the metropolitan corporation workers only turn up to clean the area before the visit of politicians, and that too at the specified place of their visits. Otherwise, the piles of garbage remain unattended, he informed Bol News.

Former nazim of Quetta Mir Aslam Rind has said the present number of workers at the Metropolitan Corporation Quetta (MCQ) has not got the capacity to meet the demands of the city’s population that has exceeded three million. The corporation has 412 permanent employees while around 700 are contractual workers.

Rind said that a private firm was hired to conduct a survey for the purpose of a ‘clean’ Quetta campaign and it suggested that some 5,000 employees would be required to do the needful.

An employee of the metropolitan corporation, requesting anonymity, has said that there is no proper budget to run the capital city of Balochistan. “We do not have any income source for the Metropolitan Corporation Quetta as entry in the public parks is free while another source of earning that is the installation of billboards is not allowed in the metropolitan areas, which is in contrast to the Cantonment Board areas in Quetta where billboards are allowed to be installed.”

‘No sweepers seen’

Rohail Ahmed, a resident of the Nawa Killi area in Quetta, has said that “I have been living here since the last 10 years and till date no sweeper from the corporation is seen at work, and the area residents privately engage sweepers to do the needful”.

According to the metropolitan corporation data, some 1,400 tons of garbage is produced by the residents of Quetta city on a daily basis, and the corporation has the capacity to remove merely half of the waste, which means that around 700 tons of garbage remains behind adding to the miseries of the public.

He added that reminders have been sent time and again to the authorities, but to no avail. A total of nine MPAs and two MNAs were elected from the city in the general elections in 2018, but none of them seem to play an effective part in resolving the miseries of the masses.

Attaullah Baloch, an official of the MCQ, when contacted has claimed that the authorities have tried their best to deliver and clean Quetta, but the lack of cooperation from the traders and shopkeepers has been a big hurdle in accomplishment of the task.

Citing an example, he said that at Quetta’s main Liaquat Bazaar, the corporation’s staff was deployed in three shifts — morning, noon and evening — to clean the area. But due to the “ignorance” of the business operators, who kept dumping garbage at various places, the volume of work proved to be morale lowering for the staff.

Saadullah Kurd, a resident of Quetta’s Qambrani area, said that Balochistan Chief Minister Abdul Quddus Bizenjo before taking oath as CM had started the cleaning drive in his area, but it was just a photo session as the garbage still lies at the main road and the link road of the area.

He urged the authorities to disburse funds immediately to the staff members of the MCQ that had been protesting for the last one year now.

However, MCQ Administrator Shaukat Ali has assured that no compromise would be made regarding the negligence of duty and action would be taken against the workers concerned.

“No one is above the law. All positive steps will be taken to address the grievances of the people immediately”, the administrator said.

He claimed that the metropolitan administration is working on a daily basis for cleaning the city of Quetta in the morning and evening shifts, and the efforts are yielding “good results”.

A sweeper working for the corporation, Shehroz Masih, has said that the staff is working in three shifts but is not being paid on time, and the salary is also very low. He suggested that the authorities should engage more workers to tackle the volume of work in Quetta.