Improving waste management in urban and rural Punjab

LAHORE: The Clean Punjab Roadmap is a flagship roadmap that focuses on urban and rural Solid Waste Management (SWM) in Punjab.

Punjab is a province home to more than 110 million people, with 67 million and 43 million people living in rural and urban areas respectively. Rural and urban landscapes are both extremely different in terms of the pollution problems they face. The roadmap is therefore divided into two parts; urban Punjab and rural Punjab, with a focused approach in each.

Urban Punjab

The urban priorities focus on the performance of Waste Management Companies (WMCs) in seven major urban cities, namely Lahore, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Faisalabad, Sialkot, Multan and Bahawalpur.
Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC) was established in 2010, followed by the remaining companies in 2013.

These companies collect the waste through primary workers and vehicles and then dispose it at a designated waste disposal site. Operations of all seven WMCs are planned to be outsourced to private international contractors to improve operations. Two of the WMC’s i.e. LWMC and RWMC (Rawalpindi) have already been outsourced to private international contractors named Al-Bayrak and Ozpak. Both the companies are from Turkey.

The seven WMCs will also expand the scope of their services to neighbouring districts, thereby increasing waste management area coverage. Starting with Lahore, LWMC will expand its waste collection services to Sheikhupura, Nankana Sahib and Kasur by November 2018. A sustainable waste disposal system is imperative to ensure the success of WMC’s. LWMC and RWMC have access to landfill sites but the remaining five are currently using temporary disposal sites. The formation of a proper landfill is currently in progress.

An IRIS attendance system has been introduced to ensure the attainment of a clear picture of ground realities for which employee oversight is of critical importance. Likewise, trackers are installed on each vehicle that helps to calculate their travel distance, improve service availability and increase access to detailed information. Containers have also been geo-tagged, with their locations triangulated to improve service provision.

A data-driven approach has been adopted to improve coordination. Weighbridge machines have been installed at landfill and disposal sites that weigh and calculate the total amount of waste deposited by each vehicle. This data is then seamlessly reflected on a “Saaf Punjab” dashboard.

In order verify and measure the performance of the WMC’s, the Punjab Municipal Development Fund Company (PMDFC) has set up an independent monitoring system that tracks the seven listed. All results and observations are recorded on a dashboard through an android application whereby each particular location is assigned a cleanliness score that falls between 1 and 5. Additionally, citizen surveys are taken every month to gauge general satisfaction with the performance of WMCs.

Rural Punjab

Punjab’s rural population consists of 67 million people and with a clear need to create a safer environment, discussions around implementing an SWM system for rural Punjab were initiated. Before scaling this strategy province-wide, a pilot, in partnership with UNICEF, was done in Bahawalpur, Okara and Kasur. A Third-Party-Validation (TPV) conducted by UNICEF to gauge feasibility demonstrated success in districts like Kasur, prompting chief minister and the Government of Punjab to launch the ‘Khadim-e-Punjab Saaf Dehaat Programme’ in November 2017.

This programme aims to bring Solid Waste Management (SWM) routines across 36 districts of Punjab and 3281 rural union councils. To launch this programme, create enthusiasm and gauge capacity on the ground, a ‘One Time Cleaning’ activity took place across Punjab in December 2017. Union Councils were given  Rs 0.1 million to complete this, and their progress was monitored through a dashboard, which used geo-tagged ‘Before’ and ‘After’ pictures as proof of activity. The dashboard collected over 4 million pictures.

The structure of the system mimics routines in urban Punjab through the primary collection by workers, secondary collection by vehicles and then dumping waste at 758 regional waste disposal sites from 19,686 pre-designated Waste Collection Points.