AS they say everything comes at a cost — and so does Karachi’s ranking as one of the least liveable cities. Karachi has slipped from the seventh least liveable city in 2021 to the fourth least liveable one in 2026. It ranks 170th among the 173 cities surveyed by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). This decline has come despite enormous spending by the Sindh government — estimated at around Rs126 billion in these five years alone — to garbage-collection contractors.

Since 2017, including the current year’s allocation, spending on garbage collection and street sweeping is estimated to exceed Rs190bn, with an estimated Rs160-170bn spent in the name of Karachi alone. No other initiative has received such generous provincial financing over the past decade — not the BRT Red Line, the BRT Yellow Line, the K-IV water supply project, the Safe City project, Karachi’s road network, not even the Right Bank Outfall Drain, which is critical to rural Sindh’s economy.

When the EIU measures liveability, environmental quality is only one of five major criteria, with cleanliness forming a sub-component. However, on Numbeo’s global pollution index, Karachi continues to rank as one of the world’s most polluted cities with a pollution index score of 89.5/100. This index evaluates air quality, drinking water availability, garbage disposal, cleanliness, water pollution, noise and light pollution, green spaces, and overall comfort. Across all these metrics, garbage disposal has remained the poorest performer despite billions being spent by the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) under the chief minister’s chairmanship.

In 2016, the Sindh government took over the mu­­nicipal functions of garbage collection and stre­­et sweeping — previously managed by the KMC and union councils — and outsourced them to foreign firms. The contracts covered door-to-door collection, sweeping of streets, lanes, medians, footpaths and open spaces, transportation to transfer stations and landfills, provision of bins and compactors, deployment of sanitary workers, and GPS-based monitoring. Initially introduced across Karachi’s districts, the outsourcing model was later extended to Hyderabad, Sukkur and Larkana.

The city’s dismal ranking on the liveability and pollution indexes reflects a crisis of governance more than a shortage of funds.

The system was designed around a simple principle: garbage should not remain on the ground. Mini-trucks were to collect waste door to door and from designated bins, feed it into compactors at district collection centres, and ensure its transportation to landfill sites the same day. Uncollected areas, roadside garbage, failure to deploy prescri­bed staff or machinery, and other performance lap­­­­ses attracted financial penalties. Vehicles were to be GPS-tracked, while manual sweeping supplemented mechanical cleaning. A command-and-control system linked to the SSWMB headquarters was to monitor fleet movements; an independent firm was to verify the contractors’ performan­ce; and complaints were to be resolved within eight hours.

Going by these performance indicators — and an estimated public-sector price tag approaching Rs170bn for the city over the period — Karachi should have become one of the cleanest cities in the region during the past decade.

Yet the reality across much of the city is different. Open plots continue to serve as informal garbage dumps. Door-to-door collection remains patchy or is altogether absent in many localities. Waste continues to accumulate along the roads, open spaces and drains. Elected representatives themselves frequently complain about inadequate responsiveness by solid-waste contractors. Karachi continues to be ranked as one of the dirtiest cities all these 10 years.

A review of these contracts against the ground realities over the past decade suggests that strict enforcement of the built-in penalty clauses should have driven non-compliant contractors into bankruptcy. The obvious question is: how have contractors been able to operate with such visible gaps between contractual obligations and conditions on the ground?

The answer lies in two major contract and statutory violations by the provincial administration itself. First, the Sindh government has failed to hire an independent consulting firm for third-party verification since 2017, effectively granting contractors a decade-long exemption from performance audits. Second, the government has bypassed Section 14(3) of the Sindh Solid Waste Management Act, 2021, which states: “The executive directors of the board shall be appointed by the chief minister either from cadre service officers working under the control of government having relevant professional qualification and experience or from private sector through a competitive process possessing the requisite qualifications and experience of the post.”

Despite managing contracts valued at Rs30-40bn, a key oversight position, such as director mo­­nito­ring and evaluation, has been filled by an of­­f­icer from the Benazir Income Support Prog­ram­­me. Compounding the issue is the lack of parliame­nt­a­­ry oversight. Reports from the Auditor General of Pakistan from 2018 through 2025 have repeatedly highlighted losses of billions of rupees by the SSWMB due to payments made without third-par­­ty verification, uncollected penalties, in­­ade­quate staffing, and overpayments. Yet, no effective corrective action has been taken all these years.

The State of Governance in Pakistan, 2023, based on a nationwide household survey by TDEA/ Fafen, found 65 per cent of Karachi respondents to be dissatisfied with garbage disposal services, while another 22pc had no service available in their locality. So, 87pc of Karachi households surveyed were either dissatisfied with garbage disposal or had no service — a remarkable outcome after years of outsourcing and billions of rupees spent on solid-waste management.

After chairing the board for seven years, starting in 2014, the chief minister transferred the steering committee to the local government minister in 2021, and operational supervision was handed to the mayor of Karachi in 2024. However, meaningful coordination with elected town chairmen and union councils to hold contractors accountable remains absent. In fact, despite their poor performance, SSWMB contractors were rewarded with a 42pc increase in payment, raising their annual bill from Rs28.3bn in 2024-25 to Rs40.3bn in 2025-26.

Like many of Karachi’s challenges, the real bottleneck has not been the shortage of funds for the Sindh government, but poor governance and lack of accountability. With the country’s economic engine ranking among the lowest on the liveability index and among the highest on the pollution index, all our aspirations for the country’s progress will remain a pipe dream.

The writer is former federal secretary, caretaker provincial minister and currently chairman, Policy Research and Advisory Council.

Published in Dawn, September 16th, 2026