Why Karachi is unmanageable?

For the past few weeks one issue which remains among the hot topics in the media is Karachi; but again for all the wrong reasons.

Once call the ‘City of Lights’, it has now turn into the city of ‘garbage’, which after heavy rains was hit by all related diseases. Hospitals, government or private filled with thousands of patients in the OPDs and wards. The most painful part of all this is the ‘blame game’ between the so called stakeholders. For all practical reasons, the city of 30 million is in complete mess.

It is an irony that country’s commercial hub, which should have been taken care of as an asset as it gives more than 70 per cent revenue to the rest of Pakistan, has been dubbed as city of garbage or like ‘Solid Waste Management’. It is high time the Centre, Sindh and the City governments should come out from this blame game, form an Apex Committee for Karachi and try to give some relief without political scoring. This city is a key for economic uplift, the more you give the more you will get. You just have to stop looking at the city with narrow vision and biased perspective.

Dr Hafeez Shaikh Thursday announced two mega project for Karachi, worth Rs95 billion. Sounds good on paper but if decades-old projects like Karachi Mass Transit remains only in file or Lyari Expressway, which took years for completion or the current Green Lane Bus had taken so long to complete or for that matter K-IV like schemes no doubt the two projects announced by Shaikh sb would be completed and that too on time.

Massive delays in big schemes multiply the already existing problems instead of resolving them. Secondly, big schemes often resulted in massive corruption and huge commission.

Karachi had been encroached at all levels and no one is ready to clear the mess. Solution is there, provided anyone was ready to listen. You may find all kind of mafias in this city, which never allowed things to settle down.

One of the biggest problems of Karachi is its massive population mismanagement at all levels. It is my considered opinion that this city of huge potential is now un-manageable and to some extent un-controllable as no one takes its ownership and looked serious. The city is divided into KMC, which controls 24 per cent of the city, Cantonment Board and DHA, beside some 30 civic agencies. After 2013 local bodies system, the power of the local government has been reduced, which led to another debate which has more to do with politics and power sharing.

Solution to Karachi required political will’, something missing for long as reflected from the recent debates in TV talk shows. Political parties including former and sitting mayors looked more interested in blaming each other rather looking for solution. Why no one from Cantonment Board and DHA were invited and they should be answerable. Three classical cases in the Supreme Court showed that the superior courts were more concerned about Karachi than those ruling the province or the city. People looked for short-term solution when governments failed. Thus the debate in Karachi remains inconclusive. More serious discussion, decisions and implementation is required.

It is high time to bring the mega city under one umbrella or one chain of command. If not, at least a board should be constituted that is headed by mayor (whoever he may be) and representative of other civic agencies including Cantonment Board and DHA and Sindh government should be part of the board.

The board should have complete power to evolve all civic policies pertaining to the whole city and enforced it without bureaucratic hurdles. They should have all the financial resources and should collect all the taxes relating to the city. Local bodies’ elections should be held for whole city and there is nothing wrong if we have direct election of mayor.

The whole city should have its own police and Commissionerate, where local people should be employees irrespective of cast or creed. All this required amendment in the Local Bodies Act 2013 and unless the Sindh government has any reservation or problem it would not be difficult. One hopes that the DHA and Cantonment Board would also not oppose a joint board system.

There should be a strict ‘accountability mechanism’ as projects worth billions of rupees go waste or in few pockets. There is massive corruption from top to bottom in almost all the civic bodies. You may find corruption in almost every second project and that is one of the reasons why they go for mega projects.

It is ironic that a massive desalination plant near ‘Do-Darya’ which should have been completed and launched in 2006, with a huge cost of $100 million could not have took off, has anyone made accountable for this failure. The simple answer is No.

If we really want to give some relief to the people there should be one-window operation kind of solution for each problem pertaining to construction business, water supply, gas and electricity.

One of the biggest issues of this city is the menace of ‘katchi abadi’. The idea was conceived way back in the 60s by few bureaucrats in the name of building low-cost housing schemes, which should have been a legal way and respectable one too for the common man. After the massive influx of population without any planning and management, the successive governments and bureaucracy encouraged people to settle in unsettled areas through illegal means.

Today there are some 8,000 such ‘abadis’ with around five million people. Instead of going for low-cost proper housing schemes the successive governments encouraged illegal settlements and later regularised some of them to get political mileage.

What is the most amazing part of all this is the fact that in none of the five major master plans made for the city, the concept of ‘katchi abadis’ never exists, which means that the city has never been developed or expanded according to the master plan. Now who provided them all kind of illegal connections through illegal means whether it is gas, electricity or water. Karachi never had any population management plan and if there is one it is never enforced.

Secondly, because of the narrow political approach and bias, justice has not been done with the city in the population census. Almost all political parties whether those ruling or in Opposition have a consensus that injustice had been done. Some petitions are also pending in the court. Now, how can you plan the city without knowing its exact population? During the last census it was revealed by Nadra sources that there are some four million aliens in the city, who were never included in the census.

Karachi in the past had multiple modes of transport and had that system improved instead of abolishing it, the successive governments would not have been facing the challenges of reviving the circular railway or bringing thousands of large-size buses. An organised transport mafia with the support of political and non-political elite creates hurdles in the way for smooth transport system.

Thus transport has been controlled or managed by decades-old buses, mini-buses, besides auto rickshaws or taxis. The private tax system brought some relief to the middle class and lower middle class families to some extent. Unless the city is given a complete transport package and its circular railway not revived, people will continue to suffer.

In 1984, one of the leading transport firms from Japan had suggested 8,000 large size buses and even an agreement had been reached but the bureaucrats foiled the attempt. Karachi has problem with water distribution rather with shortage of water. If you ask those connected with KW&SB, you would get amazing stories as how they provide illegal connections and create artificial crisis. After all in the worst water crisis we do get supply through water tankers.

Therefore, as long as the city been expanded and grows in an ill- planned manner, the system of illegal water connections will continue and each year will face so called water crisis.

The massive land distribution of the city and massive illegal construction caused major destruction to this city. Thousands and thousands of residential areas and amenity plots had been converted into huge plazas and commercial areas. All of them were given illegal connections of water, electricity and gas. Sindh Board of Revenue ‘ruined’ the city by allegedly selling massive land at throwaway prices. Encroachment is one of the biggest problems in the city. Half of city’s transport problem was caused by badly constructed roads (except some of those recently constructed) and forcibly occupied service roads by street restaurants and parking mafia.

As situation stand today, Karachi is both un-manageable and ungovernable. It required some bold decisions by evolving consensus. Situation is quite explosive but it is time to avert any explosion by defusing and addressing the issue in its true perspective.

The writer is a senior columnist and analyst of Geo, The News and Jang.

Twitter:@MazharAbbasGEO