Karachi Waste Crisis: Where Did Rs170bn Go?
News Desk
Karachi: An estimated Rs160–170 billion has been spent on garbage collection and waste management in Karachi since 2017, yet the city continues to struggle with persistent waste and sanitation problems, according to former federal secretary and former caretaker provincial minister Mohammad Younus Dagha.
Dagha, who currently serves as chairman of the Policy Research & Advisory Council (PRAC), said total expenditure on garbage collection and street sweeping across Sindh had exceeded Rs190 billion since 2017, including the allocation for the current year.
He said Karachi alone accounted for an estimated Rs160–170 billion of the spending, an amount he described as higher than the provincial financing received by several major infrastructure projects over the past decade.
These projects, according to Dagha, include the BRT Red Line, BRT Yellow Line, K-IV water supply project, Safe City project, Karachi’s road network and the Right Bank Outfall Drain.
Despite the substantial expenditure, Dagha said garbage disposal remained one of Karachi’s major urban challenges. He pointed to the continued use of open plots as informal dumping sites, while door-to-door garbage collection remained inconsistent or unavailable in many areas.
He added that waste could still be seen accumulating along roads, open spaces and drainage channels across the city.
According to Dagha, Karachi’s waste-management system covers door-to-door collection, street sweeping, transportation of waste to transfer stations and landfill sites, installation of waste bins and compactors, deployment of sanitary workers and GPS-based monitoring.
He also raised concerns about oversight of waste-management contractors, saying third-party verification of their performance had not been conducted since 2017.
Citing reports of the Auditor General of Pakistan covering 2018 to 2025, Dagha said the reports had repeatedly identified issues including payments made without third-party verification, failure to recover penalties, inadequate staffing and alleged overpayments.
The remarks have renewed questions over the effectiveness of Karachi’s waste-management system and the utilisation and monitoring of public funds allocated for keeping the country’s largest city clean.
