A fiscal orphan

Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah's recent remarks regarding the funding needed for the development of Karachi have once again brought to light the pressing issue of inadequate financial resources for the city. The CM's assertion that approximately Rs1 trillion ($3 billion) is required annually for the development of Karachi underscores the magnitude of the funding challenge.

Unfortunately, only a fraction of the necessary amount is ever allocated, meaning that the situation will invariably keep getting worse. But while the CM and his allies may try to transfer the blame for funding shortages and lack of development on to others, the fact of the matter is that the PPP has run the provincial and city government uninterrupted for almost two decades. Blaming the previous city government system and its leadership for the city's problems - as Murad did after recent rains washed away roads - is a ludicrously weak effort to shift the blame. Yes, there is much the city district government and its successors got wrong, but the real reason they are the primary target is because they were mostly led by MQM-P and its predecessors. If the provincial government wanted, it could have intervened even then to fix many problems, or at least answered questions as to where the billions that were actually spent went. Karachi Metropolitan Corporation has allocated Rs1.5 billion for roadwork since the 2022 floods. Many of these roads are still threatening for commuters.

And if the government was serious about addressing encroachments and other illegal construction, we would have seen corruption inquiries and subsequent convictions of politicians and senior bureaucrats who allegedly allowed those things to happen. Instead, the people with the power to order these investigations are complaining about why no one is investigating. Since adequate funding is near-impossible in the short term, political leaders need to up their game and like the cash-strapped voters who put them in power, try to get maximum value from every available rupee.