It is the World Bank again to help out the PPP-led Sindh government to revamp the civic agencies responsible for managing the affairs of Karachi. During a meeting with representatives of the World Bank on Wednesday, the Sindh CM announced his government was going to initiate work on a Rs33.6 billion project — Competitive and Liveable City of Karachi — from next year. If all the statements and press releases emanating during the last one year from the CM House relating to the involvement and assistance, financial and otherwise, of the World Bank, are to be believed, then in the next five years we would have a completely changed city of Karachi. Earlier, we have also been hearing of Karachi Urban Mobility Project and Karachi Water and Sewerage Services Improvement Project to be carried with the assistance of the World Bank.
The project, according to information provided by the CM House, aims at supporting the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, all the six district municipal corporations, the district council, the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board and the Excise and Taxation Department to improve their organisational structure and service delivery. “I am keen to financially strengthen the local bodies in the city so that they emerge as self-sufficient organisations,” the Sindh CM is reported to have told the meeting. But the CM needs to be reminded that the Local Government law his government has passed and adopted aims at nothing but to cripple the municipal bodies depriving them of their administrative, financial and operational autonomy. Who in the modern world is going to believe that it is provincial government which is responsible for collection and disposal of garbage — a function that should have been made responsibility of the union committees or union councils. Where in the world are the property tax and motor vehicle tax collected by a provincial government instead of local government? Is Mr Murad Ali Shah going to set these legislative and administrative anomalies right when trying to establish or dreaming of efficient local government institutions in the days to come?
Published in The Express Tribune, July 19th, 2019.
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