‘KMC doesn't earn enough to run Karachi’

KMC administrator says Karachi earns just Rs10.7 million annually

KARACHI:

The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) hardly earns Rs10.7 million annually to run the affairs of a port city with more than 16 million people.

The annual income of the KMC is too low to return the metropolis to its glory days.

The municipal tax collection, for example, was Rs1.7 million in 1918 for about 200,000 people and in 2021, its just Rs10.7 million for over 16 million people.

"We need to collect taxes - municipal and property," said Karachi Administrator Barrister Murtaza Wahab. "We cannot rely [forever] on borrowing money from the provincial government," he added.

Wahab was speaking at an event called 'How the City of Karachi Works -Past, Present and Future'. The function was organised by CLICK, a nonprofit organisation. "Karachi cannot be managed properly without money."

He said that the KMC has its own resource generating avenues, including 11 petrol pumps, 61 commercial markets and 245 huts. "They do not produce enough revenue," he said. "For example, we get only Rs61,000 annually from the huts."

Wahab said that city's 20 major thoroughfares, including Khalid Bin Waleed Road and Tariq Road, were commercialised in 2003. He said that small houses had been replaced with giant buildings. "This has created problems," he revealed.

To solve the growing issues, Wahab said the idea of collecting municipal tax through K-Electric, the power supplying company, was initiated. He said that K-Electric distributes three million bills monthly.

He said the aim was to collect Rs200 from all these people. "We could collect Rs70.20 million monthly."

Appreciating public-private partnerships of the past, the administrator said the city progressed and looked beautiful because people of Karachi had a sense of ownership. "This is our city. This is our children's city. We have to own it."

Metropolitan Commissioner Syed Afzal Zaidi said that water shortage is a serious issue of Karachi. He added transport and sewerage were also some major issues citizens had been facing for decades.

"It is a wrong perception that Karachi was built after 1947," Zaidi said. "The progress started when the Talpur era was about to end," he maintained.

Agreeing to Zaidi, Wahab said that water desalination plants were necessary for the city. He stressed that some of the locations, where plants could be set up, have already been identified. "The Sindh, federal and city governments have to address this issue," Wahab suggested.

The event was attended by a large number of students from different colleges and universities of Karachi, prominent citizens and representatives of civil society.

"Citizens should cooperate with the KMC. Karachi has been badly branded in the past, even though the city is not so bad," he added.

LG system

He said that when the time came for new delimitations in 2021, the Local Government Act was reformed and all political parties and stakeholders were consulted for this purpose.

Wahab said that in the new system, local bodies had been given full powers to solve the problems of citizens and improve their standard of living.

He said that education and health are not municipal, but provincial functions so it was decided that the provincial government would take care of these matters.

The administrator said that the performance of the provincial government is better than that of KMC when compared to medical institutions.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 14^th, 2022.