Karachi Mayor Barrister Murtaza Wahab is a good man – and he’s trying to do his best to improve the city’s roads and related physical infrastructure, so that the quality of life of the city’s 20-plus million residents can improve.
Karachi is ranked among the world’s most unlivable cities – and for good reason. It’s traffic is a complete mess and it seems that the traffic police have chosen to stand back and let vehicles (in particular motorcycles, rickshaws and SUVs) break any and all traffic laws with relative ease.
Then there is the other very pressing issue of water. While many parts of the city do get water through the piped network, the water supplied is not nearly enough to meet the daily requirements of its entire population. The result is that several areas – in particular those near the sea and which are otherwise thought to be affluent neighbourhoods – get no water at all.
Their residents have to rely on water tankers, which cost around Rs10,000 for 3,000 gallons and last between one and two weeks, depending on how many people live in the household. On top of this, they have to pay monthly or quarterly water charges to the cantonment board, for which they are supposed to be supplied water, but in reality are not.
Over the years, billions of rupees have been collected but a vast majority of residents of these areas receive no water through the piped network. If they are lucky, some residents receive a water supply for one hour every seven to ten days! And for that too, they are made to feel grateful, as if the cantonment board is doing them a favour.
This is not all. Of course, there are many other issues, not least among them traffic, solid waste management and its disposal and also the upkeep and maintenance of the city’s sprawling road network.
While there has been an improvement in recent years in terms of many more roads becoming signal-free and the city getting specialised roads for faster traffic that bypass the city’s roads, like the Lyari Expressway, the Baloch Colony Expressway or the recently completed Shaheed Bhutto Expressway, a lot more needs to be done.
Many smaller city roads are in a terrible state, and they come under the jurisdiction of the various union councils. And while the mayor of Karachi is from the PPP, the city comprises many union councils, and they are responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of roads in their jurisdiction. Quite a few of these union councils are headed not by the PPP but also by the MQM and the Jamaat-e-Islami. In fact, some of the worst roads in the city, in District Central (which also seems overrun by mountains of garbage at various spots) are in areas governed by union councils controlled by either of these two parties.
The point in this is that the blame for the city’s mess doesn’t lie squarely on just one ruling party, but all parties. All of them have made a mess of things and have usually blamed each other.
That said, the city is fortunate to have a young and dynamic mayor who is taking the initiative to improve its roads and enhance the quantity and quality of its public spaces, including parks, squares, and food streets. He also wants to make the city financially independent by issuing municipal bonds, as other cities worldwide do, thereby eliminating the need for provincial or federal government assistance.
While that may be a wish-list for now, thinking along those lines is a step in the right direction. However, the city’s primary problem is that it’s not managed by one municipal agency nor is its land controlled by a single land-owning authority; there are close to a dozen agencies that perform these functions for Karachi. And as one would expect, it creates a whole lot of mess and confusion. This explains why roads in various parts of the city are carpeted and then dug up every few weeks. The purpose is to lay a gas pipeline or another infrastructure, only to be carpeted again and then dug up again, this time for a stormwater drainage network, and so on.
There seems to be little or no coordination between these agencies. It gives the clear impression to the city’s residents that these agencies don’t really care how this disrupts the lives of its residents and how the city’s precious financial and human resources are eaten up by this unnecessary and entirely avoidable repetition of digging up of roads.
The mayor of Karachi would be doing the city’s residents a huge favour if he uses his office to somehow fix the current mess where there are simply too many agencies and authorities running their own part of the city and not caring about how the rest of the city does and doesn’t take ownership for the entire metropolis.
What is needed is a unified single municipal agency and land-owning authority for the whole city. That will help improve its governance and hopefully reduce its currently low ranking on The Economist’s Global Liveability Index.
The writer is a journalist based in Karachi. He tweets/posts omar_quraishi and can be reached at: omarrquraishigmail.com