City council approves charged parking at 24 locations

We were not even allowed to speak for a minute on the issue, says committee member

KARACHI: The City Council of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) in its session on Friday approved charged parking at 24 different locations of the city until December 2018. Through another resolution, the council approved a change in the map of the Zulfiqarabad Oil Terminal's tankers parking.



The session kicked off in the absence of Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar. Muttahida Qaumi Movement - Pakistan's (MQM-P) parliamentary leader, Aslam Shah Afridi, presided over the session during which two resolutions were approved with majority votes.

Earlier, voting was held between parliamentary leaders of three different parties. To preside over the session in the absence of Mayor, Municipal Commissioner Syed Saif ur Rehman conducted the voting where Aslam Shah Afridi of MQM got 89 votes, Karamullah Waqasi of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) obtained 55 votes and Junaid Mukati of Jamat-e-Islami (JI) obtained three votes.



The session lasted hardly 10 minutes in which Afridi swiftly got the two resolutions approved without any debate, after which the opposition protested. A member of the charged parking committee, Shehnaz Malik of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) said that she was never informed about the resolution for charged parking. "We were not even allowed to speak for a minute on the issue," she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 29^th, 2018.