LAHORE: Local Government Minister Zeeshan Rafique visited Nankana Sahib to inspect the sanitation situation on the directive of Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif, according to an official statement issued by the Local Government Department.
The Chief Minister’s Focal Person for Suthra Punjab, Asim Mahmood, accompanied the provincial minister during the visit.
In the outlying settlements of Nankana Sahib, the minister knocked on the doors of houses to take feedback directly from residents on the standard of cleanliness in their neighbourhoods. He directed the Managing Director Nankana Sahib to act on the suggestions offered by citizens.
The minister also visited the Deputy Commissioner’s office during the trip, where he was given a briefing on sanitation operations in the district.
Zeeshan Rafique said the Punjab government’s decision to post an Additional Deputy Commissioner (Solid Waste) in every district had brought improvement in administrative matters. He stressed that empty plots and the areas alongside railway tracks must not be neglected — locations that typically become informal dumping grounds once regular collection routes bypass them.
The minister expressed satisfaction that Nankana Sahib is among the districts where door-to-door waste collection has already begun under Suthra Punjab, with loader rickshaws using megaphone announcements to alert residents that collection teams have arrived.
He appealed to citizens to hand over their waste to Suthra Punjab teams at the designated time, and said residents should avoid throwing garbage into streets or markets after the scheduled collection window has passed.
Suthra Punjab is the provincial government’s flagship integrated waste management programme, operating as a public-private partnership across all 36 districts and extending to tehsil level, with standardised door-to-door collection, temporary collection points, street sweeping and engineered landfill disposal. The model is built around fixed collection routes so that households do not need to dump waste in open plots or drains — which is precisely why the minister’s instruction on plots and railway margins matters operationally.
The programme also relies on digital monitoring, including vehicle tracking and performance-based contracting, to verify that collection actually takes place in the areas assigned to each service provider.
Doorstep feedback exercises of the kind conducted in Nankana Sahib are a useful check on whether contracted collection is reaching outlying settlements rather than only the main bazaars and arteries. The test for the district administration will be whether the citizen suggestions passed on to the Managing Director translate into route changes and lifting schedules — and whether residents adjust to the fixed timings the minister has asked them to observe.
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