Mateen Khan

Starting a trade that did not exist

In 2004, if a family in Karachi wanted their water tank cleaned, they called a plumber, a sweeper, the building’s janitorial staff or a pest control company doing it on the side. Nobody did it as a dedicated service, and nobody had a set way of doing it. Sludge was flushed down the outlet, walls were given a quick brush, and workers climbed into closed underground tanks with no thought for the air inside.

Mateen Khan founded Khan Tank Cleaning that August to make tank cleaning a proper job: one company that did nothing else, with the right equipment and the same procedure on every tank.

What he built

The eight-step procedure the company still follows comes from those early years: drain with a sludge pump, ventilate before entry, take the sludge off the property, wash and scrub the walls, disinfect with chlorine, rinse, check the lid, and let the customer look inside before paying. You can read it on our procedure page.

He also set the rules that sit around the work: published prices, so customers know the cost before anyone arrives; a second worker at the opening whenever someone is inside an underground tank; and proper registration with the Sindh Revenue Board and the Federal Board of Revenue, so buildings and companies get real tax invoices. Under his leadership, the company’s quality and safety systems were certified to ISO 9001 and ISO 45001.

His role today

Mateen remains hands-on. He oversees the work at both branches, DHA Phase 2 and Gulshan-e-Iqbal, and the standard is the same whether the job is a 400-gallon rooftop tank or a factory’s underground storage. Over two decades the company has cleaned more than 10,000 tanks for households, apartment buildings, hotels, universities, hospitals, banks and factories.