A Praiseworthy Judgment against Encroachments

The yesterday judgment from the Supreme Court of Pakistan to remove all encroachments and cabin shops from public parks and amenity plots across the city has given food for thoughts to all illicit business establishments. The SC bench headed by Justice Gulzar Ahmed took serious exception to the practice of renting out spaces in public parks and roads by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) authorities.

Infocus in its earlier blog dated March 20, this year pointed out at these "unsolved and unresolved demon" of the metropolis and urban analysts believe the roadside encroachments are the main factor, which has made the Karachi' traffic and environs outright chaotic.

The impacts of these encroachments and their illegitimate space are hazardous. Not only they occupy the roads which cause severe traffic jam and obstacles for pedestrians, but they also badly affect the environment and public health of the area, besides depriving government from a sizable revenue.

Pointing out at the encroachment business in Sadder area, the SC observes "The police station are running on money received from push-cart vendors." Infocus figured out in previous blog " These small business establishments is said to be nearly one lac in number only in Sadder Karachi, which include modular stalls, moving carts, footpath shops, roadside vendors and makeshift markets. Instead of paying any utility and tax charges, they just pay Rs. 150 daily at individual capacity for their space, which become Rs. 45 crore in total in a month, distributed in area police, traffic police and KMC authorities."

Now all hope are on Commissioner, whom the SC has directed to personally supervise the anti-encroachment campaign and submit a compliance report. Whatever be the outcome, that is an outright verdict.

 

By

Editorial, Infocus

Environmental Degradation and Climate Change in Karachi -- With Special Focus on Karachi

Stressing on the need of environmental governance  notable scholar and Climate Change expert Dr. Pervaiz Amir says "Governments must integrate aspects of climate change while designing development projects" to prevent environment from degradation. As a key note speaker of a seminar "Environmental Degradation and Climate Change in Karachi -- With Special Focus on Karachi", he was of the opinion although Pakistan is globally ranked at the 7th among the world' most vulnerable countries in 2017 but as a matter of fact we are at the number one position, because of the size of population and nature of calamities.

The event was organised by Monthly Farozaan and Global Environmental Management System (GEMS) in cooperation with Farozaan Environmental Protection Organisation, Karachi Forum for Climate Change. Various speakers and participants of the seminar shared their opinions and disappointments that all the world nations take awareness of conservation and environment safety as the foremost challenges, however in Pakistan these are lowly prioritised areas before state authorities.     

Dr. Pervaiz vehemently criticises governments' policies of outsourcing public amenity services like solid waste disposal, water supply, etc and says "Outsourcing is a bad strategy as governments can make the sector of water and waste disposal sustainable by themselves."  Citing the consequences of environment degradation, the renowned scholar blamed the forestry and irrigation departments most for deforestation and desertification in the country because of which the span of winter season has been limited to just 35 to 40 days in a year.  

Dr. Pervaiz observed that the population of Karachi alone is bigger than those countries who are above Pakistan in the Economic Intelligence Unit' list of most vulnerable countries and also revealed multiple threats namely droughts, hill storms, tornados, smog, landslides and absence of pristine water, posed to the "badly managed city" in future.

Secretary Environment Sindh Dr. Baqa ullah Unar said in the seminar that as a developing country the provision of basic needs like education, food, jobs and etc remain "much bigger tasks"  before government, therefore alongside government people should also come up to contribute in the improvement of environment by themselves. He adds " SEPA are providing free plants of Coconut and Neem to people for promotion of plantation in Sindh" for that purpose. Citing the contamination of ground water as a big threat Dr. Unar told the audience that various industries owners and business community were not cooperating and working on effluent plants in their premises so the SEPA imposed penalties on them. He further complained that  other departments like Agriculture or Motor vehicle are not working alongside SEPA to prevent environment from degradation. 

Mahmood Khalid the Editor in Chief of Farozaan said Climate Change is arguably more dangerous than terrorism and told the audience that "Through Farozaan we have been creating awareness and solving problems about environment deterioration since 2006, in fact we are the one who have written and produced most on environmental issues in Pakistan."   

While Senator Haseeb Baig expresses "we are sitting on a volcano and no government will come to rescue so we must improve environment by ourselves through plantation and cleanliness habits".

Earlier, Dr Waqar Ahmed from Karachi University Environmental Studies Department, gave a brief overview of Urban Heat Island in Karachi and revealed that very unprecedentedly extreme weather changes have been observed since couple of years in Karachi Heat Index. 

By 

Editorial, Infocus