Money matters: KMC questioned on collection of fee for political advertisements

Petitioner alleges that KMC employees were suffering due to administration’s mismanagement.

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has asked the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation to confirm whether political parties were paying the fee applicable on using its property to install advertisements related to their election campaign.

This direction came during the hearing of a plea which was filed against the KMC for not paying salaries and pension to its thousands of serving and retired employees.

Advocate Nadeem Sheikh, one of the petitioners, alleged that the employees were suffering due to the poor state of the corporation’s affairs owning to mismanagement and financial misappropriation committed by the KMC Commissioner and Administrator.

He claimed that the KMC was not collecting the amount from advertisements and other revenue-generating means.



Sheikh pointed out that on April 24 the provincial government had promulgated the Protection of Defacement of Property Ordinance 2013, regulating defacement of public property.

SHC Chief Justice, who headed the bench, directed the KMC Administrator and Municipal Commissioner to file  their comments regarding whether fees had been collected from the political parties who were displaying their political banners and flags on property of local government.

“If so, what is the amount that has been collected and has any notice been issued for recovery of such amount,” the bench further questioned.



The provincial chief secretary, secretaries for finance and local government departments were also directed to constitute a provincial finance committee to resolve the issue once and for all. The Sindh government was also ordered to continue depositing Rs500million grant-in-aid to the KMC.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 4^th, 2013.