Pakistan, Jan. 26 -- Sky-high heaps of waste sitting on roads, dotting empty plots and clogging drains across Lahore scream out loud that the metropolis is drowning in its own filth.

With the Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC)-supposed to clear garbage every day-struggling to keep up with cleanliness services, as many as 24 depots draw an appalling picture of unending debris and heaps of filth with a seeping stench. The solid waste problem is fast assuming crisis proportions in the provincial capital due to hasty and overambitious designs of LWMC.

Following the patriotic whim of "we can clean our city ourselves," the public organisation spent the last two years shutting doors on the two foreign contractors, it had previously outsour...