In another attempt to dispose 9,000 ton garbage produced daily in Karachi , city district government will hire a foreign company for solid waste management.

A foreign company with expertise in managing and recycling of garbage will soon take control of Karachi's solid waste management as a last ditch attempt to save the city from becoming a huge garbage dump.

City district government is in consultation with three foreign companies out of which one will take full charge of a job which could never be done for decades despite several innovative attempts had been made, sources told media.

Sources in the CDGK said the issue of ineffective disposal of solid waste in Karachi was again highlighted after the incidence of dengue hemorrhagic fever. The matter had been discussed at a meeting headed by Federal Health Minister Mohammad Nasir Khan a few weeks ago. Officials agreed that thousands of tons of garbage accumulating in the city was the main culprit of dengue and other viral and infectious diseases.

Recently CDGK introduced public-private partnership at town level. A dozen local companies dealing with solid waste management were engaged. At present not more than 30 per cent of the garbage is sent to landfills while the remaining goes unattended or is burnt.

Each company had to operate exclusively in its town without any coordination with the other. The experiment failed due to dumping of garbage from one town to another.

Presently, the local operators lift garbage from certain points and dump them at the designated landfill site. But, in future the single operator would start it from the very doorstep of a citizen to its disposal to the landfill.

The deal will include the shifting of municipal sanitary staff and resources to the private operator. "We are not going to privatize the solid waste management but it will remain a private-public partnership in which we'll transfer all our resources and manpower to the private operator," City Nazim Mustafa Kamal said.