Maryam Nawaz says systematic waste collection has reached 25,000 villages for the first time, with Safe City cameras now watching streets and neighbourhoods.
LAHORE: Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif marked World Cleanup Day on Sunday by declaring a clean and green province and a healthy population the government’s top priority, and by describing the Suthra Punjab sanitation programme as one of the largest projects of its kind in the world.
In a message issued in Lahore, she said a systematic cleanliness programme had for the first time been extended beyond cities to 25,000 villages, and that the cleanliness of roads, streets and neighbourhoods was being monitored through Safe City cameras.
The chief minister framed sanitation as a shared obligation, telling citizens that while the state was responsible for cleaning public spaces, keeping them clean was a civic duty.
Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif used her World Cleanup Day message on Sunday to place sanitation at the centre of the Punjab government’s public-health pitch, saying that making the province clean and green and ensuring a healthy population was the administration’s top priority. A clean Punjab, she said, was the foundation of a healthy and prosperous future, and the Suthra Punjab project would lay the basis for a healthier province.
The chief minister said the programme ranked among the largest of its kind anywhere in the world, and that for the first time a systematic cleanliness programme had been launched not only in cities but also in 25,000 villages. Rural coverage has been a recurring theme of the drive, with door-to-door waste collection rolled out in district after district over the past month. She added that sustainable and environment-friendly measures were being taken under the programme, including waste management, recycling and the cleanliness of public places.
Monitoring, she said, is being handled in part through the Safe City camera network, which is already used across Punjab for traffic and environmental enforcement. “Ensuring cleanliness in streets and neighbourhoods is the government’s responsibility, but maintaining it is the citizens’ duty,” she said, urging residents to dispose of waste properly, avoid the use of plastic and keep their homes, streets and neighbourhoods clean. She also invoked a religious framing, saying cleanliness held special importance in Islam and citing the maxim that “cleanliness is half of faith”.
The message comes as the provincial government keeps the programme under internal review; the Punjab administration ordered a confidential survey earlier this month to audit performance under Suthra Punjab and the Model Village initiative. The chief minister did not release fresh figures on tonnage collected, landfill capacity or recycling volumes in Sunday’s message, and the government has not published independent verification of the claim that the programme is among the world’s largest.
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