How many more children have to die before Karachi becomes a priority for the people who are supposed to protect it? This city carries Pakistan’s economy, pays the highest taxes, fuels industries, powers the ports and keeps businesses running day and night, yet receives nothing close to what it deserves. Karachi gives more than any other city in the country, but what it gets back is almost insulting. The roads collapse, the drains overflow, the footpaths break apart, and even the simplest safety measures, such as covering a manhole, are treated as optional.
Little Ibrahim did not fall into that manhole because of fate. He fell because the system that should protect millions simply stopped functioning. That open manhole is the perfect symbol of Karachi’s reality: a city generating enormous wealth but surrounded by deadly negligence.
What exactly is this system doing while Karachi suffers? Where does all the money go… the taxes, the development funds, the emergency funds, the yearly budgets, the grants, and the endless “special packages”? Karachi contributes so much to the national exchequer that the country would guarantee the state’s financial extinction without it. Yet when it comes to investment, the city gets the “we’ll see” treatment.
If even a fraction of Karachi’s contribution returned to the city, it would have world-class infrastructure instead of craters in the middle of main roads. Karachi deserves answers: Who drains its budget while its streets sink?
Instead of real solutions, the city receives excuses. Leaders argue over authority while the citizens face daily danger. One minister declares, “Ask the Chief Minister — this is a provincial mess.” The provincial minister counters, “Don’t look at me. The Mayor can’t even fill a pothole.” The mayor states, “My hands are tied until the federal funds release the money they’re withholding.” A federal representative concludes, “Karachi’s chaos is a local governance failure. We won’t bail out incompetence.”
Karachi gets passed from one empty promise to the next, stuck in a circular debate of “You fix it,” “No, you fix it,” and “It’s not my problem to fix,” while the blame keeps shifting and the holes in the streets stay wide open.
Karachi deserves leaders who match the city’s strength with equal responsibility. It deserves action — not another promise.
Yumna Zahid Ali
Karach
