Get out!: Gloves come off as KDA cuts electricity to KMC offices

Civic bodies continue to wage war against each other in battle for Civic Centre

KARACHI: While the system of delivery of civic services in the port city is almost on the verge of collapse, two civic agencies responsible for such services, the Karachi Development Authority (KDA) and Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), are at loggerheads once again.

Amid all this drama, the Sindh government’s silence speaks volumes. On Thursday, the KDA suspended electricity supply to the offices being used by KMC officials at Civic Centre and reportedly confiscated their equipment.



The staffers of the recently revived KDA are slowly and gradually taking over Civic Centre, which was originally the head office of the KDA before the authority was merged with the KMC under the local bodies’ system of the City District Government Karachi (CDGK), which was introduced during General (retd) Pervez Musharraf’s government over 15 years ago.

The takeover process began in mid-June when Nasir Abbas - who was the senior director of KMC’s former KDA wing - was given the additional charge of KDA director-general by the Sindh government and began to sit in the office previously occupied by the KMC administrator.

When the then KMC administrator, Laeeq Ahmed, came to know that his office has been occupied by Abbas, he quietly shifted to the administrator’s camp office located behind National Stadium.

In October, through a series of letters, a war began among both the civic bodies over possession of different properties, including a VVIP rest house and a bungalow on the COD Hills, which is currently under the possession of the municipal commissioner of KMC, Badar Jamil.

On Thursday, according to an officer of the KMC requesting anonymity, the electricity connection to the KMC’s offices on the fourth and fifth floors of the Civic Centre building was suspended for half-an-hour and their equipment were confiscated by KDA officials.  After which, the officer said that the situation turned hostile and ‘anything could have happened’. “We would have moved our offices to the KDA director-general’s office [on the first floor] and they could have done nothing about it,” the officer claimed, adding that everyone knows that the DG has the backing of the Sindh government and has no personal enmity with any KMC official.



The Sindh government wants to sideline the KMC and that is why they are not letting the KMC officers work, he claimed, adding that if the situation persists, a major clash between the two organisations could occur, in which chances of human loss cannot be ignored. “We do not come to Civic Centre for personal work. We are government servants and we should be treated with respect,” the official said.

Meanwhile, KMC spokesperson Ali Hassan Sajid said around 10 offices of the KMC were deprived of electricity. Sajid pointed out that both the agencies have agreed that the KMC would leave the Civic Centre building in phases. “We will write to the local government secretary [about this] and could also go to court against the behavior of the KDA officials,” the spokesperson warned.

Deputy mayor Arshad Vohra said they would not vacate their offices on the upper floors of the Civic Centre building and will soon resolve the issue with the KDA.

On the other hand, a long-serving officer of the KDA said that a meeting between Nasir and Jamil was held in September, in which it was decided that by October 14, the KMC would vacate the first four floors of the Civic Centre building and the other floors would be vacated by November 15.

After the passing of both the deadlines, the officer said that such action was inevitable. “We want to solve the issue amicably but what can we do if the KMC is not paying any heed to the deadlines?” he asked. He added that at the time of the revival of the KMC, the Sindh government gave it Rs800 million in transitory funds, of which half belongs to the KDA.

Whatever equipment the KMC officers are taking along with them to their old offices, 50% of that belongs to the KDA. Apart from that, the official pointed out that the KMC was supposed to pay a Rs140 million electricity bill of the Civic Center building to K-Electric, which now the KDA would have to pay.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 11^th, 2016.