On the one hand, the Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC) claims to set up a state-of-art Sanitary Landfill Site in Lakhodair, Lahore, but on the other, it has failed to adopt any scientific manner to dump the waste properly which, according to LWMC admin, was its landmark achievement.
Pakistan Today has learned on Thursday that the LWMC is dumping a large amount of city’s solid waste illegally at its Sanitary Landfill Site, Lakhodair.
After the closure of years old landfill site at Mehmood Booti, a new Sanitary Landfill Site was constructed on 52 hectares in Lakhodair with a cost of Rs 1 billion, which was inaugurated on April 18, 2016. This dumping site was declared country’s first ever scientific disposal landfill site. This was also claimed at the time of inauguration that the new site will meet all international standards required for a waste disposal site.
Initially, the landfill site started functioning with two cells LOT-I & LOT-II with a capacity to dump 2000 to 2500 tonnes solid waste daily, while four others are also proposed to be constructed in future. This was also declared that waste would be managed on daily basis in environmentally friendly and scientific manners to minimise the environmental hazards of toxic effects of waste, and with no impacts on underground water or atmosphere.
Sources in the LWMC revealed a large amount of 8000-tonne dump is collected from the city on a daily basis while this site can only dump 2000 to 2500 tonnes of waste in scientific manners.
They said that after giving 1000 tonnes waste out of 8000 tonnes to DG Khan Cement, around 4500 tonnes is left which is illegally dumped in traditional manners. “In past two managing directors of LWMC had been sacked for dumping waste illegally,” they added.
They further revealed that after collecting waste from the city, this was also the responsibility of the management to segregate the waste but all this extra waste is dumped without any segregation. “It would be much hard to dump all the collected waste even after the completion of other two cells because waste in Lahore is increasing with every passing day,” they said and added that the main reason of closing previous landfill site at Mehmood was dumping waste in unhealthy manners.
An official in LWMC seeking anonymity told Pakistan Today that such issues prevail in the LWMC at large due to inefficient and inexperienced management.
LWMC spokesman Jamil Khawar, while talking to Pakistan Today, has said that the issue will be resolved after the completion of its four other cells. He said that this year construction work will be carried out on the next two cells which will help in dumping a large amount of waste in scientific manners.
