GUJRAT: The scope of Gujranwala Waste Management Company (GWMC) is being expanded from the city’s 64 urban union councils to all the urban and rural areas of Gujranwala, Gujrat, Hafizabad, Wazirabad and Mandi Bahauddin districts by outsourcing its operations at tehsil level from Nov 5, a senior official of divisional administration told Dawn here on Tuesday.

He says that as per the new policy of Punjab Local Government Department, all the available sanitary staff and machinery of the municipalities and district councils is being placed under GWMC control and the services of private companies will be hired for waste collection at tehsil level.

He says the private companies will be answerable to the waste management company, while the provincial government will monitor their performance.

Another official source says that currently the GWMC is busy making the final arrangements for the launch of outsourcing of its operation from Nov 5 under Punjab Cheif Minister’s “Suthra Punjab” (clean Punjab) initiative.

Private firms to take over waste management at tehsil level

However, he says, in Gujrat district the GWMC and the contractor firms are facing problems in hiring the required number of sanitary workers as the available sanitary staff in the urban and rural areas is not enough to cover the entire district.

Gujranwala Commissioner Naveed Haider Sheerazi says that the divisional and district administrations have already sent their respective requests to the Punjab government for the issuance of the required funds to launch the outsourcing of operations at once and hopefully the finance department will soon release the amounts for the purpose.

He says the assistant commissioners have been assigned the task of monitoring the solid waste management in their respective jurisdictions.

Meanwhile, the commissioner chaired a meeting of deputy commissioners, officials of local government and the waste companies to review the progress on the initiative.

The DCs participating in the meeting through video link briefed him about the preparations made so far.

After being upgraded to the divisional headquarters during Parvez Elahi tenure as Punjab chief minister in August 2022, Gujrat had also been given its own waste management company (GtWMC), and a sum of Rs500 million was also released for the purpose a couple of years ago.

However, the company has been rendered dysfunctional for the last 19 months.

Official sources say the provincial government has a plan to revive the company and the process may begin following the launch of outsourcing of waste management operations.

Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2024