ISLAMABAD: Some of Islamabad’s wealthiest neighbourhoods receive municipal waste collection without paying for the service, the government has told parliament, as the capital struggles with a six-month garbage backlog that has raised environmental and public health concerns.

Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry told the National Assembly that residents in affluent parts of Islamabad, including F-series sectors and areas along Margalla Road, were receiving waste collection services without paying user charges.

“Not a single penny is being paid” by residents in some of the capital’s expensive neighbourhoods, Chaudhry said, while arguing that Islamabad needs a more sustainable system for financing municipal services. Current reporting also indicates that the government plans to introduce waste collection fees, although details of the proposed charges have not yet been announced.

The remarks came during a parliamentary discussion over garbage dumped between Sectors I-10 and I-11, where accumulated waste has prompted complaints about foul smells, environmental pollution and possible risks to groundwater and public health.

Six months of waste accumulated at site

MNA Asiya Naz Tanoli raised the issue through a calling attention notice, questioning the government over waste dumped near residential areas.

Chaudhry acknowledged that accumulated waste at the site had not been transferred for around six months.

Authorities have now resumed removal operations.

The minister said Islamabad generates approximately 300 metric tonnes of solid waste each day, while around 700 tonnes a day are currently being removed from the accumulated I-10/I-11 site as authorities work through the backlog.

The distinction is important: the larger figure reflects the current clean-up operation rather than Islamabad’s normal daily waste generation.

New I-9 transfer facility expected within months

The government says a designated solid waste facility in Sector I-9 is expected to become operational within two to three months.

Once functioning, the facility is intended to receive waste from the capital before it is transported to a permanent disposal site on Chak Beli Road in Rawalpindi district.

The government has also contracted a Turkish company to provide waste management services in parts of rural Islamabad, while plans are under way to extend outsourced services to urban sectors through national or international firms.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Tariq Fazal Chaudhry said the CDA currently handles waste collection in the main urban sectors through its own sanitation workforce and machinery.

Who pays for a clean city?

The parliamentary exchange has brought a less visible part of Islamabad’s garbage problem into focus: how municipal waste services are financed.

Waste collection is often noticed only when it stops working. But collecting household garbage, transferring it safely and disposing of it without contaminating neighbourhoods, soil or water requires infrastructure, workers, vehicles and reliable funding.

Talal Chaudhry argued that Islamabad’s existing arrangements provide services without adequate cost recovery, including in some of the capital’s most expensive residential areas.

The government says it wants to introduce a fair user-fee system, with charges reflecting differences between urban and rural areas.

How those fees would be calculated, who would pay them and when they would be introduced remain unclear.

For now, the immediate challenge is more basic: clearing months of accumulated garbage from I-10 and I-11 while ensuring that another backlog does not simply emerge somewhere else.

The debate therefore goes beyond whether Islamabad looks clean.

It is also about whether the capital has a waste management system capable of paying for, collecting and safely disposing of the garbage it produces every day.