Documentary on Karachi-1

By Aziz Sanghur

Karachi has no plan for a one-chair operation, which is creating problems between the city district government and the six cantonment boards, Defence Housing Authority, Pakistan Railway, Karachi Port Trust, Pakistan Navy, Pakistan Army, who were battling land ownership rights.

While the relatively new city district government Karachi is struggling to implement its master plan, which will only cover areas under its jurisdiction. Six cantonment boards of the city have been operating without master or contingency plans since the creation of the Needless to say, as the city expands the lack of a master plan has created simmering civic problems for the residents of the cantonments, including Clifton, Karachi (Saddar), Shah Faisal, Korangi, Manora, and Malir.

The recent rains made it abundantly clear how efficient the cantonment boards are and even before the rains, sanitation was poor and garbage collection sporadic.

According to town planners, federal level agencies, especially the armed forces, are exempt from many regulations and hence do not adhere to city master planning. There is a constant struggle to acquire and develop land through legal or illegal means. A powerful nexus between formal sector developers, politicians and bureaucrats, manages not only to acquire all vacant land, but even land that has been set aside for recreational and amenity purposes, said Arif Hasan, who is the chairman of the Urban Resources Centre and a veteran town planner. More recently he had become a vociferous critic of the DHAs plan to develop a waterfront project over 14 kilometres of prime beach land.

Chaudhary Nasir Ali Khan, vice president of the Karachi Cantonment Board, said that the cantonment was operating according to a master plan and have employed professional engineers, who were developing the area, according to the plan. He claimed that sanitary workers were working round-the-clock to clean and collect garbage in the area.

However, it should be mentioned that the confusion over the jurisdiction was creating problems for the residents of the Karachi Cantonment Board who pay taxes to both the KWSB and the cantonment board.

Karachi Water and Sewerage Board officials said it was the responsibility of the Karachi Cantonment Board to improve the sewerage system in its jurisdictions. But cantonment board officials claimed that the KWSB collects a conservancy tax from the residents of the Karachi Cantonment Board, which made it the responsibility of the KWSB to maintain the sewerage system in the area. They said that most of the streets were still inundated by sewage and there was no proper arrangement to pump it out.

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