Untangling the mess of urbanisation
On any day of the week, Imambargah Park is buzzing with life. Children play at a play area while people chat on benches that line the footpath. It’s a place where people can exercise and relax. But before Imambargah Park was a recreation area, it was a vacant plot used for dumping waste.
The park has been transformed thanks to the Punjab Cities Program, a government initiative to clean Punjab through improved governance and planning. Support by the World Bank and implemented by the Punjab government and Punjab Municipal Development Fund Company (PMDFC), the project has received $236 million to improve the conditions of cities throughout the province by improving water supply, sewerage, storm drainage, solid waste management, wastewater treatment plants, urban roads, parks, and streetlights.
Umar Sheikh, a shopkeeper living nearby Sheikhan Wala Mohalla said the park has made a noticeable impact on the feeling of the area. Sheikh is part of a three-member committee comprising of locals to look after the Imambargah Park. “It has turned out a great recreational spot and a picnic point”, Sheikh said while walking on grey colored jogging track made up of clay and dust stone. “Even nearby school tours are visiting it.”
A few yards to the side of the park is the main bazaar of Muridke, and on the other side is a railway crossing and bus stand. Hasnain Hafeez, Muridke’s municipal officer of infrastructure and services, said they have hired a gardener and a guard for maintenance and to look after the day-to-day functions of the park. These roles are appointed by the locals through a committee and report back to him if there are any issues. “Like a few days back, a swing broke down,” he said.
Hafeez said the concept for maintaining and monitoring the park comes from the guidance of experts at PMDFC, the implementing agency of the World Bank’s project. From PMDFC, he said municipal workers received training in different key concepts aimed as part of the program to build the capacity of local government bodies. Earlier, municipal corporations oversaw running such projects. “It was for the first time, from designing to procurement to execution [operations and maintenance] has been performed by us”, Hafeez says.
The contributions of locals have taken a lot of pressure off municipalities said Hafeez, sitting in his office a few kilometers from the park. On his phone, he shows before and after pictures of the park as the light leaks in from his window. “With the community’s help, they were managing far better the routine operations and maintenance of the park with the minimal staff”, he said.
After training came the execution and design of major projects, like Imambargah Park. Hafeez said that from design to execution, the entire task has been done by them. “Whenever we faced an issue like a clogged sewerage pipeline or bad wiring of a streetlight in the park, it took them many days to identify the problem because they were unaware of the design and map of the project”, Hafeez said.
Obstacles and urban growth
According to a 2017 census, Muridke was the fastest growing city in the area, with a growth rate of 2.56%. An industrial estate, which was part of China’s Belt and Road project, sits seven kilometers away, which could also create population growth in the city. Some estimates say Muridke’s population will explode by two or three times as early as 2050. When it comes to such fast-growing cities like Muridke, there’s an increasing need for a master plan to ensure better management before things turn messy.
Kamonke municipality, around 24 km. from Muridke, has faced serious issues, like sewage, that the Punjab Cities Program has also tried to address. “There was knee-deep water whenever there was rain. It would even swamp main Grand Trunk Road (GT Road)”, sub-engineer Naveed Ahmad told The Express Tribune.
To be able to deal with the water when parts of the municipality flooded, the municipality used a disposal station to pump flooded water into a nearby drain. But Ahmad said the pump would often break down and since they were too expensive to fix, they would lie unused for months. “The solid waste includes sewage, plastic shopping bags, and scraps,” he said. The motor often malfunctioned because of the intake of these things and because of fluctuations in voltage.
But since February 2021, Ahmad said these motors were working without disruption -- their repairs were covered by the project’s budget. Sumera Sami Ullah, chief officer of Kamonke, 20 kilometers from Muridke, said making the disposal plants fully functional was a main priority of the Punjab Cities Project.
She added that adjustments to the motors have helped deal with voltage fluctuations, which has resulted in a 10-15 percent energy savings. The municipality also introduced a collection point for sewage to scrape garbage from it. Sami Ullah said she feels fortunate that Kamonke was selected for these improvements.
Naveed also said sewage conditions have improved under the project; Open drains that caused accidents, pollution, and overflow have been cemented over. In the coming weeks, he said they are also going to procure new machinery for solid waste management, which would be a huge development. Sami Ullah said she is disgruntled, however, at the frequent changes within local government. The setup has changed four times since the project launched, she said. “It severely affected our work.”
The project has been implemented in phases; the first phase was the planning stage which happened during the initial years. Then came the training stage where staff learned how to run sub-projects, and deal with rehabilitation, maintenance, and repair. After that, locations were chosen for the project based on certain conditions, like IT equipment, connectivity, and IT literate staff. Contributions were made to electricity, with the installation of lights with sensors for energy conservation, carried out because of an energy audit initiated by The World Bank.
In places that already had the required equipment and infrastructure, the program facilitated repairs. The procurement stage is still forthcoming. Twenty percent of the project's funds are allocated to training and capacity building of staff and 80 percent goes towards infrastructure. The other municipalities in addition to Muridke are Bahawalnagar, Burewala, Daska, Gojra, Hafizabad, Jaranwala, Jhang, Jhelum, Kamalia, Kamoki, Khanewal, Kot Addu, Okara, Vehari, and Wazirabad. Municipalities Corporations were chosen based on a variety of factors, including the growth rates, location within Punjab, and potential for economic growth.
Importance of reform
Idrees Ahmad, the program’s communication officer, said the Punjab Cities Program has built a website for each locality where the program is underway. The website contains maps of where infrastructure improvements were made, with geo-tagging that is updated regularly. Websites also contain a computerized complaint tracking system and a computerized financial management system.
This feature allows the people in charge of the program’s services to identify problems when they appear. For example, if tube well data shows they are working for 10-12 hours but there are complaints about a lack of water, reasons for this shortcoming can be more easily pinpointed. Ahmad said this will help ensure sustainability, integration, and transparency within the program.
Iftikhar Rasool, the managing director of PMDFC said the project is much needed because it will help cities where these changes are implemented to serve as engines of economic growth. It took the designers three years to make a template for the project that would be sustainable, he said. The municipalities are also contributing to the project with their own funds. In early collaboration with the World Bank, 15 percent was contributed by municipal corporations but that percentage has risen to 20 percent for the Punjab Cities Program.
Out of $180 million, $36 million will be local contributions. “We have linked the disbursement of funds to the performance under the project model, “Rasool said, adding that was another way to help ensure the project was sustainable. Trainings for staff were done according to a set of guidelines and external auditors were brought in to ensure transparency.
To prevent a tug-of-war between local government representatives and parliamentarians, grants for the project are not linked to political scenarios but are instead dependent on each locality’s performance. For the progress of the project, the Punjab Cities Program has focused on training and capacity building for municipality staff.
Rasool said with these steps to move the project forward, he believes the Punjab Cities Project will have the intended effect. “These [things] will start improving gradually”, he said with a smile on his face.