KARACHI: A new Pakistani web series hopes to raise awareness and challenge people’s attitudes about littering and waste management and bring home the message that keeping a city clean is as much the responsibility of citizens as of governments.

Clean Sweep, a cricketing term for when one side wins every game against their opponent, is an upcoming four-episode web series starring Ahsan Khan and Kinza Hashmi that will release on YouTube on May 13.

The series is directed by Ali Farhan Anchan and produced by Zeekay Films in association with the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) under its SWEEP initiative funded by the World Bank.

“Citizens have the biggest role to play in cleaning the city,” SSWMB Deputy Director Media, Almas Saleem, told Arab News. “The series aims to bring behavioral change by conveying [this] message in a dramatized manner. The government is doing its work but without people’s support, change will not happen.”

Talking about the inspiration behind the show, director Anchan said it emerged from his own experience growing up playing cricket on the garbage-lined streets of Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and commercial hub.

“It’s not like people don’t know where to throw garbage, they have just gotten immune to throwing it in all places other than a dustbin,” Anchan told Arab News, saying his show would approach the issue “through the lens of overseas Pakistanis” who have not normalized littering and throwing garbage in the streets and empty plots.

And since Pakistan is a cricket crazy nation, the director chose to intertwine the sport with the message of cleaning up. 

“We have subtly touched upon other relevant issues such as the solid waste mafia, corruption and other illegal practices,” said Anchan, “but these are secondary themes, the first and foremost is for citizens to take responsibility.”

The series features a young Australian-born Pakistani called Noor, played by Hashmi, who is visiting Karachi to research environmental pollution. Popular Pakistani actor Ahsan Khan plays the male lead, a cricketer called Yousaf who has returned from England and now coaches a street cricket team in Karachi.

“Being Muslims, cleanliness is half our faith but how much attention are we paying to cleanliness?” Khan told Arab News. “I am glad we are talking about this [in the series] in some way.”

“As an actor, my primary responsibility is to entertain people but anything that goes beyond it and raises some awareness,” he added, “will always be my preference.”