The PPP and the Sindh government must respect the people and resolve their issues
KARACHI: I visited Faisalabad a couple of weeks ago. Due to a flight availability issue, I took a flight to Lahore and from there I went to Faisalabad by road. My travel to Lahore was very brief, as I was travelling from the airport to the Kalma Chowk bus stop. I was surprised to see a change in the entire landscape of Ferozpur Road, where there are now about five flyovers and interchanges. When I last visited Lahore in 2009, Ferozpur Road was very different as only a couple of intersections existed. More surprisingly, the duration of completion for each bridge was between 60 to 120 days and some of these were at least twice the size of the two bridges that are being built at the most critical points of Karachi, Malir Halt and Malir 15. I am a regular commuter and pass both of these points twice a day. On average, it takes 40 minutes to cross Malir, and between 15 and 20 minutes to cross Malir Halt. The foundations of both bridges were laid in November 2013 and were supposed to be completed in 12 months — by December 2014. However, with the current pace, it seems that the bridges will not be completed before June 2016.
I am a civil engineer who has worked on bridges and I have a fair idea about effective project management and projected timelines. As an ordinary citizen, I feel frustrated every day while passing these two construction sites where work is under progress at a snail’s pace and the total number of labourers at both locations is hardly 30. The total number of visits by Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah, the mouth piece of the Sindh government, and Minister of Local Government Sharjeel Memon and all other ministers, advisers, MPAs and MNAs is not more than five in the last one and a half years, during which they put the huge population through much daily suffering. In addition to the wastage of fuel, time and physical and mental exertion, there are frequent incidents of mobile and wallet snatching in the traffic jams caused by the ongoing bridge construction.
I am not exactly a fan of Shahbaz Sharif or the PML-N, but during my brief stay in Punjab, people told me that the chief minister makes regular visits to the sites of ongoing projects, which are mostly surprise visits, sometimes even occurring at midnight. This keeps everyone — government officials, consultants and contractors — on their guard. We can’t expect Qaim Ali Shah to visit construction sites at such a frequency due to his age, but the huge army of Sindh ministers can be assigned the task of visiting and providing feedback. In addition, PPP Chairman Asif Ali Zardari, Faryal Talpur, and the rest of the clan are all in Karachi and can visit and push the project teams for timely completion of projects. All the PPP leadership and Sindh cabinet is concerned about is DHA, Karachi, and their only movement within Karachi is from DHA to the Sindh Secretariat. DHA is the only well-maintained residential area in Karachi, simply because it is not being managed by the Sindh government. None of the Sindh government areas in Karachi match the DHA in terms of quality, which is why none of the big guns of the Sindh government and the PPP reside in any other part of Karachi. And, if anyone does not presently live in the DHA, he or she is trying his or her best to move there.
The PPP and the Sindh government must respect the people and resolve their issues instead of leaving them at the mercy of contractors and corrupt, incompetent officials. My request to the PPP leadership and the Sindh government is to please visit the sites of ongoing projects and ensure their completion quickly so that people’s sufferings can be alleviated.
Waseem Anwar
Published in The Express Tribune, May 30th, 2015.
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