With no funds, KMC cannot avert urban flooding during coming monsoon, says mayor

The city of Karachi, which contributes 95 percent to the country’s economy, has been given no new schemes in the new budget.

Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar said this on Saturday as he addressed a press conference at the Frere Hall.

According to a statement issued, the mayor said that the monsoon season was just around the corner but the cleaning work in drains had yet to be kicked off. The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), he said, did not have sufficient funds to carry out cleanliness work on its own.

If the drains were not cleaned ahead of the monsoon season, the city could witness a major disaster due to rains and the Sindh government would be responsible for that, Akhtar said, adding that Karachi had been deprived of funds for the last 12 years.

He said the rainwater drains had not been cleaned since 2018 as the KMC did not have enough funds for that. He lamented that though he had asked Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah to release funds to the municipality several times, but it was to no avail.

“The KMC cannot carry out cleanliness ahead of the rain spell that’s why the provincial government is requested to release funds so that the people of Karachi could be saved from urban flooding.”

Akhtar said the KMC was to get Rs8 million from the World Bank for the cleanliness of rainwater drains but the amount was yet to be received. The disbursement process, he said, could take more time, if the Sindh government did not speed up its bureaucratic processes.

The mayor warned that the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) had already issued a warning of urban flooding and if necessary preventive measures were not taken, Karachi might face irreparable loss during the coming monsoon season.

“Besides the drains, rainwater gets stagnant in underpasses and main arteries and it has to be drained out on an urgent basis and for that we need heavy machinery, pumping stations and necessary staffers round the clock,” he said.

Speaking on the non-completion of uplift projects in Karachi, Akhtar said the KMC had not been provided all the allocated funds and their projects suffered delay. Sharing details of the last four years, he said Rs5 billion was allocated for the KMC in 2016-17 but the corporation actually received Rs4.1 billion. He said the same allocation and receipt repeated in the fiscal year 2017-18.

The mayor said that in 2018-19, the KMC was given only Rs2.5 billion out of the allocated Rs5 billion, whereas, in 2019-20 it received only Rs625 million from the allocated amount of Rs3.333 billion.

He claimed that 400 schemes in Karachi had been badly affected due to the shortage of funds, whereas, work could not be started on another 300 schemes in the city. He pointed out that the KMC had to pay outstanding bills of Rs8.5 million of its contractors.

Akhtar said the Sindh government increased the salaries of government employees every year, except the salaries of KMC workers. The corporation was not provided its due amount due to which the dues of the employees kept increasing and more than Rs3 billion was yet to be paid to the employees, he lamented.

“The provincial government once again increased salaries by 10 per cent, and if we are not given special grant in this regard, we would be unable to make the increment.”

The Pakistan Peoples Party, he said, had been ruling in the province for the last 12 years but the people of Karachi were not given even a single bus for transportation.

Responding to a question, the mayor said that he could have resigned way earlier, if the issues of Karachi could be resolved be his resignation. “We have raised voice at every forum and the federal government allocated funds for Karachi on our demands. Even the prime minister and chief ministers are decrying lack of powers and it is the flaw of our system,” he said.