RAWALPINDI, Aug 6: Rawalpindi administration on Monday entered into yet another agreement aimed at managing the solid waste in the city allowing United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) to collect, dispose and recycle it in the populous city.

UN-HABITAT in collaboration with Akhtar Hameed Khan Memorial Trust (AHKMT) would launch its pilot project in a union council of Rawalpindi covering 1,000 houses and would later extend the project in phases.

District Coordination Officer (DCO) Rawalpindi Saqib Zaffar, country-director of the UN agency, project director of the trust and officials of the waste management department decided in a meeting on Monday that the intending parties should opt to work in any of the union councils including Chaklala, Rehmanabad and Gharibabab.

“The UN-HABITAT has already started solid waste management in many south Asian countries including Bangladesh where the model has proved to be successful. This will be the first of its kind in Pakistan,” the DCO told Dawn.

He said the UN agency would charge owners of 1,000 houses with a nominal token fee for collecting and disposing garbage from their houses and would install a small plant for segregating the trash and then recycling it into energy and other useful products.

It is worth mentioning here that the district administration had earlier entered into an agreement with a private company, Waste Management of Pakistan (WMP), for the collection, disposal and recycling of the entire waste in the city but after eight months of hectic negotiations, it was shelved.

Rawalpindi city generates 800 tons of garbage daily of which hardly 600 tons is lifted by sanitary workers while the remaining is left in the streets to produce stinking smell in both commercial and residential localities providing habitats for bacteria and many diseases.

The WMP was supposed to install Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF), a waste converter technology, at Losar Village in the city but last month, the district administration refused to accommodate the company on grounds best known to the provincial government.

After canceling the contract with WMP, the Punjab government asked Rawalpindi administration to facilitate a Turkish firm already engaged in Lahore regarding solid waste management, and apply the same operation in Rawalpindi.

However, so far none of the companies have formally started work on streamlining the wastes and resultantly unattended garbage heaps and stinking smell has made the lives of residents miserable.

“After three days, the UN-HABITAT would select a union council and the project would be formally launched. This model of garbage management was quite viable for congested cities like Rawalpindi and I hope that it would do the trick,” EDO-Municipal Services Imtiaz Ahmed claimed.