Karachi, the largest and the most populated city of Pakistan was initially following the act of Municipal Government. Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) is a government backed organization. In year 2000, it was given the position of City District Government (CDG). There are various departments working in KMC such as education, enterprise and investment promotion, literacy, medial services, municipal services and the list continues so it clearly eradicates the perception about KMC as a garbage collecting corporation. Moreover, KMC also provides health services to many hospitals in Karachi. KMC also has the authority to take legal action against the land mafia in Karachi.
Among various departments of KMC, Solid Waste Management is one such department which is mainly responsible to facilitate the general public of Karachi by ensuring that they are provided a pollution free environment, treat the hazardous and toxic waste in order to protect people and environment.
Since the inception of KMC, people consider it as a garbage collection corporation mainly but in reality KMC is far beyond this. This is mainly because KMC has not been successfully able to create awareness among its target audience i.e., masses. There are times when KMC organizes different events but because of lack of awareness and participation, KMC cannot carry out its activities in effective way. Moreover, the customer feedback has also not been taken into account by the KMC by considering themselves as monopoly in market.
However, with rapid change of time, KMC should realise that it needs to have some strong PR strategies which can help it change the perception about it. The PR strategies by KMC should be strong enough so that they will not fire back and create worse situations for KMC.
KMC should first increase awareness about its municipal services by organizing different campaigns which depict their interest towards cleaning and protection of the environment. KMC’s municipal services should be highlighted by creating public service messages and for this purpose KMC should engage themselves with better media relations so that every single activity of KMC can have media coverage. Media plays an important role in changing the perception of the people because presently. Moreover, KMC should effectively communicate with their audience in order to make them understand the positioning of KMC and the misconception that masses have about KMC. Furthermore, KMC should also take feedback of every single event it organizes by using tools of social media.
Furthermore, the KMC should also focus on highlighting the importance of recycling which is the need of the hour. It can also organize events related to environmental pollution and importance of recycling in which they should gather the volunteers from all over Karachi and accomplish its purposes of cleaning various areas by volunteers.
MUHAMMAD MUSTAQEEM YOUSFANI
Karachi