Karachi — a 100-day plan

Karachi is in large part a stinking foetid mess that presents almost as much of a health risk to those living there as do the vagaries of the security situation. Attempts to clean up the city have either faltered and stalled midway as did the one in March this year, or simply never got off the ground at all with the commitments hanging in mid-air much as does the rising stench. Now the Karachi Mayor has picked up the brush for the purposes of a photo-opportunity and kick-started a 100-day cleanliness campaign, a move we can do no more than warmly welcome. Assorted officials accompanied the Mayor and they will fade into the background once the cameras disappear, but it is going to be down to those below the Mayoral rank to ensure that ambition is matched by on-the-ground reality.

Mayor Akhtar has gone beyond solid waste management saying he plans to construct a hospital, a school and a park and that the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation will help out the DMC’s in District East, Korangi and Central. It is a vast task. There are 250 vehicles owned by the KMS for the purpose of rubbish collection and only 110 of them are in working order. In District Central alone there is an 80,000-ton mountain of rubbish as a backlog, never mind day-to-day clearance. There is a lack of coordination between the various agencies that have a responsibility for solid waste management; and the recent agreement between the Sindh government and a Chinese company to collect rubbish in Districts East and South is under fire from the MQM for not taking it into confidence before the agreement was signed.

Despite the many impediments it is to be hoped that the Mayoral initiative is able to transcend the corruption and inefficiency and political back-biting that have collectively rendered our largest city into a vast rubbish-dump, a national disgrace. It offers the dirtiest of faces to foreign visitors and business-people and devalues any notion of Karachi as a City of Lights becoming the City of Blights instead. Good luck Mr Mayor, you are going to need it.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 3^rd, 2016.

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