| Abstract | Although privatization is not a new concept in Metropolitan Karachi, effective management of solid waste is still too far to achieve. Many places in the city, except few high-class areas, portray the live examples of inefficient management and carelessness in handling solid waste. One of the clear reasons, as in other cities of third world country, is insufficient resources and management skills of KMC with respect to the growing solid waste production. In recent years, the government authorities have initiated to include the private sector like service-contracting through NGOs and sharing responsibilities with CBOs. These approaches have significantly improved the situation in some of the areas. However, private sector involvement is not devoid of problems and has lot of obstructive factors still to be resolved. 'This thesis is an endeavor to assess the effectiveness of performance of KMC and other private and community partners involved in solid waste management judged by the perception of different stakeholders. The effectiveness and co-ordination between each of the party i.e. KMC, NGO and CBOs as well as the users was assessed through systematic questionnaire survey and structured and semi-structured interviews. The data collection was performed in two types of groups- firstly, the user groups from three different socio-economic levels that are directly influenced by the solid waste management system, and secondly the management teams i.e. public or private parties responsible for the management of solid waste. For the user group, three areas with varying socio-economic level of the inhabitants and varying degree of private and public sector involvement were selected. The selected areas were termed as Area I (i.e. with low economic status), Area II (i.e. with lower-middle economic status) and Area III (slightly higher economic status). 24 questionnaires were collected from Karachi Metropolitan Corporation i.e. KMC officials responsible at various authoritative positions including five experts from other Government Authorities related to solid waste management and its issues in Karachi. Fifteen questionnaires were collected from personnel involved in all together 6 NGOs in variety of position and responsibilities such as direction, co-ordination and field works and for CBOs, about 22 questionnaires were successfully collected from five of them. The survey results showed that the average satisfaction level of the users regarding the performance of the different organizations was very low. I lwever, each socio-economic level had a different perception about the performance of KMC, CBO and their combined performance. Higher socio-economic level group portray high community initiatives as well as high consideration by KMC eventually maintaining a well-managed solid waste management system. The preference of community and priority consideration of KMC was found to be diminishing as the socio-economic condition were decreasing. Regarding the performance ranking by the management team i.e. by KMC, CBO and NGO, each party of management team ranked themselves as operating at their best but ranked other two and their combine performance as less satisfactory. However, after the involvement of private sector the performance of individual teams especially KMC was ranked to be significantly improved. Regarding the existing problems in private sector involvement in solid waste management in overall Karachi area, major five types of problematic areas were enlisted to be ranked by each of the management team namely- Low community participation, Management problem, Sociooperation Problem, financial problem and lack of co-ordination with municipality. Overall, the most problematic area was the management aspect and then financial aspect. However, the perception of each management group about the different problematic areas was found to be varying except for the management aspect since each of the party equally realized it as the most problematic area. The underlying factors for each of the problematic aspects were also ranked. The major factors causing problems in management was lack of accountability to community and low willingness to manage, problems regarding finance was due to inadequate fee collection and insufficient cost recovery and that for low community participation was mainly low willingness to pay, to keep the area clean and less priority given to solid waste issue. Further proposed solution to improve the problems from open answers were grouped under certain solution types and ranked as per the majority of respondents for each of the problematic area. Finally, on the basis of problems and solutions proposed specific recommendations for each of the problems were proposed. In order to increase community participation of households, education and awareness, provision of appropriate incentives and penalty and developing control system for regular clean up were suggested. In terms of managerial aspects, due recommendation was proposed in order to establish an integrated solid waste management system with NGO as the major initiators, KMC and government authorities as the monitoring and controlling party and CBO as major operational group thus by establishing and streamlining the roles and responsibilities. Further, training and exchange visits in order to motivate managers were emphasized |