Suthra Punjab at Two Years
A historic expansion of sanitation services—and the institutional work still needed to turn collection into a sustainable waste- management system
A reform worth recognising
Pakistan’s public discussion of municipal waste has traditionally begun and ended with a simple question: was the garbage lifted? Suthra Punjab changed that conversation. It created visible service standards, extended organised sanitation into rural areas that had rarely received it, expanded fleets and workforces, and made daily performance measurable in a way that the former municipal model generally did not.
The programme was implemented in phases. Early tenders were invited in August 2024, awards followed in September, and contractors mobilised thereafter. Some first-phase operations began around October, while later packages followed in December. The provincial government formally launched the programme on 3 December 2024. Consequently, its “two-year” point is best understood as an operational period reached progressively, rather than a single anniversary shared by every district.
The scale is unprecedented for Pakistan. As of September 2026, the official programme portal describes coverage across all 41 districts and 146 tehsils, supported by a field force of roughly 180,000 and around 40,000 vehicles and other operational assets, handling more than 55,000 tonnes of waste a day. This province-wide organised service—particularly its extension into rural areas—represents a substantial improvement over the highly limited or absent arrangements that preceded it.
The most important achievement is not a fleet number. It is the creation of a province-wide expectation that sanitation is a continuous public service, including outside major urban centres. Local administrations are more attentive, complaints now receive structured follow-up, and sanitation performance is politically and publicly visible. The programme has also created direct employment and a broader market for locally manufactured equipment, workshops, transport, fuel and supporting services.
Success in collection is not yet success across the waste chain
Cleaner streets are a genuine achievement, but collection is only the front end of waste management. A complete system must also provide protected community collection points, transfer stations, recovery and treatment facilities, and environmentally sound disposal. If a modern fleet ultimately delivers mixed waste to a controlled dump, the collection system has improved while the environmental system remains incomplete.
Official sources describe a large programme of landfill and transfer infrastructure. That ambition is welcome. However, infrastructure should be classified by engineering performance, not by its administrative title. A sanitary landfill requires, among other safeguards, engineered cells, leachate management, controlled access, environmental monitoring and planned closure. In field operations familiar to the author, sites have weighbridges, RFID-based truck monitoring, CCTV and soil cover, but do not have leachate control. They are therefore more accurately described as monitored or controlled dumping sites—not sanitary landfills.
This distinction is not semantic. It determines whether the programme is merely moving waste more efficiently or actually protecting soil, groundwater, air quality and surrounding communities.
The planning model needs to become local
The first agreements were prepared and mobilised at exceptional speed. That urgency produced results, but it also left gaps. Operational requirements were assembled largely from local administrative demands without the depth of technical due diligence and transaction advisory normally expected for a programme of this size. Subsequent addenda have revised resources, KPIs and contract values—an implicit recognition that the original model needed correction.
A population-based formula alone cannot design a waste service. Resource requirements also depend on road and street length, settlement pattern, commercial footfall, collection frequency, haul distance, waste composition, topography, traffic constraints and the need for second or night shifts. In rural areas, for example, alternate-day collection can require capacity for accumulated waste from more than one day. If the design assumes a single day’s volume, the service is under- resourced before operations begin.
The same problem appears in complaint thresholds. A uniform threshold of 100 complaints per tehsil can treat a small service area of 10–15 union councils, a medium one of about 23 and a large urban-rural area of more than 100 as operationally equivalent. The complaint count may remain a useful measure, but its performance threshold should be normalised by population, union councils, routes, service events and severity rather than assessed only through one absolute number.
The hybrid model placed responsibility and control in different hands
The current contracts use a hybrid structure in which contractors were required to prioritise inherited government machinery and personnel. In principle, this preserved public assets and jobs. In practice, much of the transferred machinery required extensive repair, while contractors remained exposed to penalties for its availability. The inherited workforce operates under public- service rules, union structures and administrative controls that private operators cannot fully direct, yet absenteeism and performance can still affect contractor KPIs.
The principle for the next phase should be straightforward: responsibility must follow control. Contractors should be accountable for employees and assets they recruit, finance, operate and manage. Where government retains control over personnel, land, approvals or inherited assets, the corresponding risks and performance consequences should remain with the responsible public institution.
Digital accountability has become administratively fragmented
The shift from manual monitoring to the PED and related digital systems was necessary. It has created traceability that did not exist previously. But digitalisation has also been layered onto multiple administrative channels: the 1139 helpline, provincial monitoring units, WMC and Agency channels, Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner complaint cells, and various messaging groups. The same issue may appear more than once, while contractors must respond through several formats even when only one portal affects the formal KPI.
Punjab needs one complaint, one ticket and one record. Every administration level should see the same verified case through role-based access. Duplicate complaints should merge automatically; closure times should stop when a case is rectified in the field; system synchronisation failures and disputed PSIDs should enter a documented correction process. Automated reporting should replace repetitive manual reports.
Independent monitoring and public participation should be strengthened, not diluted. The purpose is to make accountability credible: every deduction should trace to a defined contractual requirement, verified evidence and a fair appeal process.
Payment discipline is an operational requirement
Waste collection is a cash-intensive service. Payroll, fuel, tyres, maintenance and workshop costs continue every day. Although minimum-wage and fuel indexation mechanisms have generally operated, delayed balance payments and large deductions can create months of working-capital pressure. Media reports have placed total programme penalties above Rs10.51 billion; that figure requires official reconciliation, but the underlying contractor concern is consistent: deductions are often applied before disputes are finally resolved.
A penalty should correct service failure, not interrupt the cash flow required to deliver the service. Undisputed invoice amounts should be released within fixed timelines. Disputed deductions should enter a separate, time-bound adjudication process. Wage and fuel obligations cannot wait for an administrative dispute to complete.
Sanitation-fee recovery creates a related burden. Under the current regime, contractors conduct property surveys, support bill printing and distribution, follow up with households and businesses, and maintain recovery records. Residents sometimes withhold or misstate information because they do not want to be billed, while recovery performance remains an operational target. Public authorities must lead communication and enforcement, ensure verified property data and provide official merchant, QR, POS and wallet channels that do not require field staff to handle cash informally.
From rental mobilisation to an investment model
The first cycle proved that the private sector could mobilise at scale, but the rental market could not always supply the required number of reliable vehicles. Broad initial eligibility also allowed participation by firms with very different levels of sector experience. Future qualification should give greater weight to demonstrated performance, financial resilience, technical teams and operational learning while preserving fair competition.
The next procurement cycle should shift progressively toward a fleet-investment model. Because waste-management machinery has a useful depreciation life of roughly six to eight years, contracts should be structured over a comparable period, with performance protections and periodic review. At least 70 per cent of the core operational fleet should be new at mobilisation. Subject to mutually agreed end-of-term provisions, the contractor should normally retain the fleet, because fully depreciated machinery offers limited long-term value to government and public ownership has historically struggled with maintenance.
An alternative is government-funded equipment with a shorter three-to-four-year operations-and- maintenance contract, a model used in other jurisdictions. It may suit selected cities, although the total procurement cost, maintenance responsibility and long-term condition of publicly owned assets must be evaluated before selecting it.
Existing contractors with sound performance should receive appropriate recognition in future qualification or renewal decisions. This need not prevent competition. It simply assigns value to city-specific knowledge, trained teams and systems developed during the first phase.
Banks and financial institutions must become part of the model
The future model cannot remain dependent on the balance-sheet strength of individual contractors. A serious investment-based system requires financing institutions that understand municipal service contracts, fleet depreciation, payment cycles and the residual value of specialised machinery. Without that participation, even capable contractors will struggle to finance a predominantly new fleet while also providing performance securities and carrying several months of fuel, payroll and maintenance costs.
Government, the State Bank of Pakistan, commercial banks and development-finance institutions should develop a dedicated framework for the sector. Practical measures could include assignment of verified contract receivables, escrow or direct-payment arrangements for debt service, standard machinery valuation, insurance requirements, step-in rights and financing tenors aligned with six- to-eight-year fleet life. The objective would not be to transfer commercial risk to government, but to make properly awarded and performing public-service contracts bankable.
Financing discipline would also improve procurement. Contractors able to purchase new machinery through structured credit would be less dependent on fragmented rental markets and could plan preventive maintenance, replacements and workshop capacity over the contract period. Banks, in return, would receive transparent performance and payment data through the same unified digital system proposed for government monitoring.
Infrastructure must come before the next expansion
A contractor can procure vehicles and manage routes; it cannot manufacture land. Permanent depots, parking and maintenance premises must therefore be treated as public infrastructure. They may be decentralised where land availability requires it, but they must be protected for long- term operational use. The same applies to GTS sites, waste enclosures, community collection points, access for heavy vehicles and future disposal capacity.
Temporary GTS arrangements repeatedly fail when nearby residents object to smell, traffic or exposed waste. The solution is not to move the same problem from one rented plot to another. Government must reserve appropriately located land, build enclosed facilities to industry standards and control development around them. Operators can then maintain and run the facilities through measurable service contracts.
Community-level infrastructure can also reduce the quantity transported to transfer stations and disposal sites. A practical first step is the two-bin separation proposed in the earlier article: wet and dry household waste, with bulk commercial kitchen waste managed separately. Wet waste—which creates most odour and leachate—should move frequently in enclosed systems toward composting or other biological treatment. Dry waste can enter small community sorting and recovery units. Only residual material should continue to a regional GTS and engineered landfill.
A governance framework for the next phase
Suthra Punjab should now move from rapid mobilisation to institutional consolidation. Before the next major procurement, government should issue a formal mandate and constitute a multidisciplinary working body including the Suthra Punjab Authority and Agencies, Local Government, the Environment Protection Department, land-use planners, finance and revenue institutions, and reputable technical and transaction advisers. Experienced operators and industry representatives can be consulted through a transparent process.
The working body should produce one provincial framework with locally calibrated service designs. Its immediate priorities should be:
- service-area modelling based on waste generation, geography, roads, density, collection frequency and haul distance;
- clear allocation of land, HR, asset, approval, revenue and performance risks;
- one integrated complaint, monitoring and reporting architecture;
- fixed payment timelines and independent, time-bound dispute resolution;
- long-term fleet finance and procurement models tied to asset life;
- a funded infrastructure plan for depots, GTS, community points, recovery, treatment and engineered disposal; and
- a sustained public-participation programme through schools, communities, volunteers, social media and enforceable local rules.
The real measure of success
Suthra Punjab deserves recognition for attempting something Pakistan had not done at this scale: treating sanitation as a universal, monitored service rather than an occasional municipal activity. Rural inclusion, visible cleanliness, employment generation and administrative attention are important gains. They should be protected.
But the programme will ultimately be judged by what remains after the first contracts end. Are sites reserved and protected? Are depots and transfer facilities permanent? Is waste separated and recovered? Are residuals disposed of in engineered landfills? Are public agencies and private operators accountable for the risks they actually control? Can capable companies finance the next generation of fleet without being destabilised by unresolved deductions and delayed payments?
The first two years demonstrated that Punjab can mobilise. The next phase must demonstrate that it can institutionalise. That is how a cleanliness campaign becomes a durable waste-management system.
Selected sources and data notes
- Government of Punjab — programme launch, 3 December 2024
- Suthra Punjab Authority — current programme dashboard and institutional information
- Suthra Punjab Authority Act 2026
- Dawn — “correction phase” and programme scale, 19 January 2026
- Associated Press of Pakistan — 2025 programme review
- The Express Tribune — reported financial strain and penalties, 5 August 2026
- Dawn — Faisalabad investigation; allegations remain subject to due process
- Pakistan Today — report on the IPOR public-opinion finding
Data note: Official figures have changed during rapid mobilisation. Figures should therefore carry an “as of” date in the publication version. The official description of disposal sites as engineered landfills should remain subject to site-level verification against published engineering and environmental criteria before it is repeated without qualification.
About the author
Dr Adnan Hafeez is CEO of Imperial Group. Alongside managing a diversified portfolio, he has worked in Pakistan’s solid waste management sector since 2017, with experience in project development, investment, contracting and municipal operations across different service-delivery models. This article reflects his personal observations and views; constructive discussion is welcome at Adnan@iglpakistan.com.
Disclosure: Imperial Group-associated companies participate in Suthra Punjab service contracts. Operational examples are generalised; readers should consider this involvement when assessing the author’s perspective.
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