As the government seeks to end its contract with Turkish waste management companies, it is heavy handed in how it sees them off
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By Shahab Omar
n the night of the 21st of December 2020, reporters across Lahore began getting vague calls from Turkish companies working in Pakistan, asking them to attend an emergency press conference. Dedicated as they are to their jobs, some of the reportes managed to get up from their greasy dinners or sleepless slumbers and went over to the hastily organised presser. What they found there was astounding. Officials from the company milled about looking rather annoyed and as if they had not been the ones to call up this meeting with such short notice. It was not clear what had happened, but a small crowd had gathered, and they did not look happy. It quickly became apparent that something was not right. The companies in question were Al-Bayrak and Ozpak. The two Turkish waste management companies had come to Pakistan nearly a decade ago under the invitation of then-Punjab Chief Minister, Mian Shehbaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim
WASTE MANAGEMENT
League Nawaz (PML-N). Back then, they had been portrayed as saviours of the City, helping turn Lahore into a dynamic, modern city. But here they were late at night condemning the Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC) for a raid conducted on their workshops with assistance from the Punjab Police. So how did relations between the LWMC and Lahore’s former leading lights sour so much that the LWMC felt it necessary to bang open doors with a police escort and start pulling out drawers and confiscating files? Profit looks at what went bad with Lahore’s waste management system.
Waste is a problem
M
anaging solid waste is actually one of the biggest problems and considerations that urban planners have to deal with. Since it is not a particularly glamorous topic of discussion, the hard work that goes into keeping cities clean often happens behind the scenes and out of the public eye. And a lot of the time, the technique used by administrators is out of sight, out of mind. Of course, at
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