Proper local governance in Karachi will help the city, the province, the country

Karachi is practically functioning, or rather malfunctioning, without a city government these days.

Though the city government has never really been effectively empowered in terms of control over land and critical civic services, nor has it ever been provided with the capacity to create a revenue generation base for itself or implement planning initiatives, such as the various Master Plans that never saw the light of day, the present crisis is unparalleled in the way that it has diluted and curtailed the functions of the city government.



There are various contributing factors, with the absence of a functional local governance legislation and system being the biggest one. Various functions and services are divided in terms of the 'system' they adhere to. Some municipal services are using the 1979 version of the local governance system, while others follow the one introduced during the reign of General Musharraf, where Karachi was divided into 18 towns representing its political and administrative jurisdiction; education being one of them.

A city of Karachi's size and potential has the best chance of being well-governed if a consensus is reached between important political, business and civil society representatives on a common vision and strategic roadmap for the city.

There is also the requirement of having an 'empowered' city government that has a certain level of independence and powers for planning and implementing the shared vision for economic growth, infrastructure development and environmental improvement.

An empowered city government does not in any way imply that its mandate conflicts with that of the provincial and federal legislative but an empowered city government needs to be protected from politically motivated interferences in its policy making.

Certain services that have a purely municipal character need to be under the mandate of the city government. While not going into the political context, and taking only the relevant planning and administrative aspects, it is a matter of some concern that 'municipal' services are finding a place within a provincial context through legislation. We now have the Sindh Katchi Abadi Authority, the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board, the Sindh Special Development Board, while recently a Sindh Mass Transit Authority has also been sanctioned.

Such legislations would not only further complicate the functioning mandate of Karachi but also of other large cities and secondary towns of Sindh. Instead, we should have had separate Solid Waste Management Boards, Building Control Authorities and Development Boards respectively for Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana and Nawabshah to name a few.

The secondary cities and towns of Sindh are in desperate need of an urban renewal and development processes to make them financially viable, environmentally progressive and socially equitable.

With their own unique economic, cultural, and development potentials to offer in supporting sustainable national growth, cities are the engines of growth and innovation for nations and any that muzzles its urban growth potential does so at the risk of seriously inhibiting its national growth potential.

This argument is not only relevant for Karachi and other cities of Sindh but for the country as a whole. In Pakistan, demographic trends show that the country's population has been rapidly urbanising, with an average annual rate of urbanisation exceeding four per cent since 1951. It is estimated that by 2030, Pakistan will be predominantly urban, with 45.6 per cent of its population living in urban areas and about 12 cities housing more than one million people each. The urban population recorded during the 1998 Census was nearly 43 million, while the 2010 estimate stands at 63.1 million.

We just cannot hope to have a prosperous and vibrant urban growth in Pakistan with the current dysfunctional local governance system that curtails the placement of legitimate and globally accepted powers and functions within the city government mandate.

We do not even have a municipal cadre and, when it comes to Karachi and other cities of Sindh, we have not made any constructive, legislated and well thought-out effort to engage important urban stakeholders such as the private sector and civil society groups so that they are better regulated to cater to concerns such as working conditions and that the financial benefits are also shared by the government.

The writer is an urban planner and runs a non-profit organisation based in Karachi city focusing on urban sustainability issues. He can be reached at [e-mail]

Published in The Express Tribune, November 17^th, 2014.