Dried up: City’s water crisis dominates assembly proceedings

MQM legislators accuse Sindh govt of diverting Karachi’s development funds to rural areas

KARACHI:

While residents clashed over water in New Karachi, the acute shortage of drinking water in the city once again dominated the proceedings in the Sindh Assembly on Tuesday.

After a heated debate inside the House in which opposition members belonging to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) accused the provincial government of diverting development funds allocated to the metropolis to rural Sindh, the party's lawmakers vented their anger outside the assembly, demanding the provision of water to Karachi.

As the discussion of the year's budget expenditure began with Sindh Assembly speaker Agha Siraj Durrani in the chair, the opposition members took the floor, claiming that despite huge allocation of funds in the budget, the people of Sindh were deprived of basic facilities such as food, water and shelter. "There will now be riots for water in Karachi and the situation could spiral out of control," worried MQM parliamentary leader Syed Sardar Ahmed. As he spoke, reports started coming in about a clash between two groups over water in New Karachi.

"The government makes tall claims about the allocation of funds in various sectors, but the nine months' performance report presented by the finance department in the House has exposed the incompetence of the government in utilising these funds," said MQM's Muhammad Hussain.

Talking about the funds earmarked for Karachi's roads, he said that Rs588 million were set aside for seven schemes, of which Rs51 million had been released but not a single rupee had been utilised by the relevant department. Meanwhile, he added, the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board had submitted high-priority schemes in the annual development programme, but it had been in vain.

"Rs1 billion has been allocated for the 'Karachi package' but the utilisation has been zero in the last 11 months," he claimed, adding that he had discovered that the funds allocated to Karachi were being released for schemes in the rural parts of Sindh and saying that he could  provide proof to the House. "Karachi, which contributes 90 per cent of Sindh's revenue and 70 per cent of the entire country's revenue, has been neglected by the federal and provincial governments," he lamented.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Muslim League-Fundamental MPA Khalifo Waryam Faqir accused the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government of political victimisation, claiming that it had stopped releasing development funds to the opposition members.

PPP's Dr Sikandar Shoro, however, while defending his party, said that it had exceeded the past record of development in the province. "It is the PPP government that has introduced solar energy, distributed land among landless peasants and trained thousands of young people under the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Youth Development Programme," he pointed out.

As the debate about budget utilisation and proposals for the upcoming fiscal year continued, the speaker adjourned the session till Friday. This irked the MQM lawmakers, who wanted to discuss Karachi's water crisis.

Following the session, Syed Sardar Ahmed told the media that the government had no plan to alleviate the water shortage. "For the last four years, the Sindh government has been allocating the funds for the K-4 project to supply 60 million million gallons of water per day (MGD) from Keejhar to Karachi, but it failed to utilise these funds and start the work," he claimed. Ahmed added that the Sindh local government minister had announced a free water tanker service for various areas of the metropolis a couple of days ago but no tangible results had yet emerged.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 13^th, 2015.