Rawal Lake returned what Islamabad could not trace
Urban Bystander
The syringe was not on the programme.
World Environment Day at Rawal Lake had arrived with caps, gloves, banners, borrowed seriousness and the careful smiles of people expecting photographs. The lake, not wishing to appear unprepared, had brought evidence.By the time the Director General began speaking of sustained efforts, the count behind him had reached nineteen. The count was syringes. Used ones, lifted from the banks of Rawal Lake on the morning of 4 June.
A cameraman searched for an angle in which the lake looked grateful. Nearby, a tea seller rinsed glasses in a blue tub and sold mineral water to people cleaning a reservoir.
Along the lake, the volunteers also found assorted medical waste and enough plastic to satisfy the official phrase, “a significant quantity of hazardous and solid waste”.
The Director General observed that hospital waste and plastic near a critical drinking-water reservoir highlighted the need for sustained efforts. No inquiry was announced. No source was named. The photographs were taken.
Then a student bent toward what she thought was a bottle.
“Don’t touch,” said her teacher. “Use gloves,” said an official. “Whose is it?” she asked.
The adults paused. In Islamabad, every dangerous object has a department, but no parent.
She had come for a certificate and one good deed. Now she was handling the city’s infection-control policy. The syringe had no address, no CNIC and no disposal certificate. It had more civic presence than most files in the capital.
The banner behind her still promised a greener tomorrow. The lake, being oldfashioned, had brought yesterday’s waste.
One official spoke of public responsibility. Another checked the banner was visible. A third looked injured, as if his press release had been interrupted by evidence.
Under the rules, a used syringe is supposed to be made safe, segregated, labelled, recorded, and sent through an approved disposal chain. The bag has a colour, a label, a category and a rule. It has everything except a biography. No one can read where it went.
The syringe in the lake was not the beginning of a mystery. It was the end of a route no one could publicly trace.
The tea seller watched without surprise. “Will they fix it?” she asked. “Beta,” he said, looking at the water, “first they will decide who saw it.”
Islamabad cannot pretend such routes are imaginary. In 2023, it was reported that a vendor hired to incinerate medical waste at PIMS had allegedly diverted infectious material, including used syringes and blood bags, into informal sale. That does not tell us where the Rawal Lake syringes came from. It tells us such routes are real.
Barkat Contractor understands this better than the rules do. Burning a syringe earns nothing and produces ash. Selling it earns money and produces a customer. Barkat does not see a broken system. He sees a working one. The syringe moving toward revenue first, and the drain later.
Nosy Mynah, who had waited for the speeches to thin, read the shoreline as a balance sheet. On one side; yellow bags, inspection visits, a licensing regime, portals, vehicles, and incinerators announced with the usual confidence. On the other side; nineteen syringes. She looked for the line marked Final Disposal and found it blank.
The official numbers make the file heavier, not clearer. A federal health ministry statement put Islamabad’s infectious waste at 4-5,000 kilograms a day. PakEPA once had 97 healthcare facilities under observation; only 23 submitted compliance reports. By February 2026, the regulator cited one commercial waste-management company and 10 private hospitals with registered incinerators.These are not the numbers of a city without paperwork. They are the numbers of a city whose paperwork cannot follow the bag.
Mirza Chughal Khor, asked who was responsible, filed the only honest answer. The cleanup was hosted by Punjab’s Small Dams Department. The agency that found the syringes is federal. Healthcare facilities answer to regulators of their own. Municipal waste takes another route. The catchment touches more than one jurisdiction. The syringe sits in a seam where several authorities can each say, paperwork in hand, that it is not theirs. He marked the file Not Ours and closed it, which is the file’s permanent address.
Nobody needed to sensitise, the cleaners. Hospital sanitary workers, municipal sweepers, waste pickers, shoreline volunteers, nullah cleaners, men lifting bags they did not seal, and children playing where nothing has been declared hazardous yet. They meet the city without acronyms. They know a needle is not a concept note, and a torn yellow bag is not a policy gap. Public health does not fail in seminars. It fails in hands.
At the far end stand the people never in the transaction; the scavenger with loose waste, the volunteer with the heavy bag, the family waiting at the tap.
The Director General had called for sustained efforts. The lake had been filing that report for years.
On 4 June, for the length of one photograph, Islamabad acknowledged receipt.
The report remains under process.
The writer can be reached at [email protected]
