Karachi Water woes

Forest Pakistan -- Significance, Situation & Initiatives

Water Conservation in Metropolitan & Launching The Farozaan Area Water Partnership Karachi

Pakistan Water Partnership is a part of Global Water Partnership Program and volunteering this partnership to provincial and district levels, the launching ceremony of the Farozaan Area Water Partnership Karachi was held on March 3, 2018 at Sindh Social Welfare Training Institute Karachi.

The head of Pakistan Water Partnership Sardar Muhamad Tariq presided the ceremony with internationally-famed scholar and expert on water resource management Dr. Pervaiz Amir as the keynote speaker and guest of the evening.

Dr. Pervaiz Amir stressing the need of trees and water in urban cities said that citizens must come up and play their roles to make Karachi sustainable and livable. He said that because of scarcity and contamination of water Karachi is longer livable now. “Even if you (people) want to live without conserving and managing your water resources then you must build a thousand new hospitals for your healthcare because most of the disease you are infected these days are water-borne in Karachi”, he opines. Replying a question from audience Dr. Pervaiz suggested that desalination plants and rain water harvesting could be two alternate and smart solutions in Karachi to meet out water demands rather banking completely upon governmental schemes.

Sardar Muhammad Tariq was of the view that there is no substitute of clean air and pure water on earth, therefore both must be preserved and cared. He emphasized on the increase of water storage capacity in Pakistan. In this regards he reveals “In case of drought our country has only 30-day water storage capacity, compared to India’ 100-day and Australia’ 600-days. While the Egypt has a remarkable storage capacity for more than three years and this art of water management the Egyptians inherited and learned from their old civilization.” He pointed out that if Pakistan has to meet out its agricultural and industrial demands of water, it must bring improvement of up to 40% in it’s current water storage fold.

Sardar Tariq also told the significance of the Sustainable Development Goals and pointed out the plastic pollution and marine pollution as the top negative indictors of the city.       

Earlier renowned environment journalist and the Editor in chief of Farozaan threw light on water crisis in Karachi and signaling out the water theft by tanker mafia termed it the main reason behind water scarcity in the metropolitan. 

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Editorial, Infocus

Public littering; Crime that’s charged only in Karachi

Throwing trash in public and open spaces is definitely a criminal offence in Pakistan Panel Code, however the recent decision of the judicial Magistrate to release the citizens in Karachi booked under Section 188 for throwing garbage in open space is really a judicious one.

The Section 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) of the Pakistan Panel Code has been here in Pakistan since a long time. But when the Sindh Government through a notification issued on February 26, 2018 on behalf of Home Department specially imposed a ban on dumping household, industrial, commercial or hospital waste in open residential and commercial areas, it cast a dark shadow.  The notification states “In pursuance of Section 195 (i) (a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the SHO of the police station concerned is hereby authorised to register complaints under Section 188 of Pakistan Panel Code in writing for violation of Section 144 against those who don’t obey these order”.

Like always the Karachi police followed these ragged orders with open arms and began arresting common people across the city. Though it was written in the notification that “Unscrupulous elements in the municipal authorities, contractors of the Solid Waste Management Board (SWMB) and some private citizens are also in the habit of burning these heaps garbage, which is resulting in serious environmental and health hazards”. And, also on February 22, 2018 the SWMB chief Taha Farooqui had himself admitted that “all the garbage being generated by the metropolis was not reaching the landfill sites” and urged the civic agencies to ensure that their waste reaches the required destination. But police arrested only citizens rather any contractors of SWMB or staff of municipal authorities who were and still are overtly involved in burning garbage in public spaces instead of shifting it to garbage stations or landfill sites.  

After the issuance of notification, the Karachi Police without wasting time started taking action and registered cases against citizens. From the very next day in Old city area police arrested two suspects who allegedly threw garbage on a main road and registered FIR against them. Similar actions were taken against a number of citizens for throwing garbage outside homes in Garden, Saudabad and Khawaja Ajmer Nagri areas within days.

However, when two of these culprits were presented before court the judicial Magistrate Asif Raza Mir ordered the release of the accused and quashed cases against them. In his remarks the Magistrate stated when “nothing was ideal in the city in respect of the disposal of garbage, it was strange to arrest people over garbage-throwing”. The Magistrate further and rightly observed that the administration has neither made any arrangement for lifting trash nor provided any proper civic facilities to the citizens that’s why waste was dumped at public places in localities, and it was not fair to arrest citizens in such conditions.

There is no doubt public littering is definitely not acceptable, and many less considerate citizens have a nasty habit of disposing of trash in open spaces in the absence of trash bins in streets and roads. It is an open secret the garbage collection system in the city is overwhelmingly politicised and unsatisfactory. So, most of the people in the city tend to get rid of their household trash by duping it in the nearest kachra kundi. But if this can get them arrested, that seems to have no logic.    

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Editorial, Infocus     

(Courtesy    Mera Karachi Group for image)

Sindh Food Authority & its lone benefactor Karachi

The Sindh Food Authority is supposed to get active this week from Feb 20, 2017, with Karachi as its first experimental and most lucrative phase. The Authority’ Bill was approved by the Sindh Assembly on March 8, 2017 and with the signature of the Governor Sindh it became the Sindh Food Authority Act on April 8, 2017.

There is no denying the Sindh Food Authority is the need of the hour. If it works impartially and transparently, safe and healthy food would be accessible to an already-deprived common man. As reported in media, the Authority have four various financial penalties at its disposal, which may be termed source of revenues too. The Registration Fee on all vendors from a 5-Star restaurant to push-cart vendor ranging from Rs. 500 to Rs. 50000. The Annual fees on them from Rs. 80 to Rs. 8000.  Penalties ranging from Rs. three lac to five lac if medical of employees are not covered and similar amount of fines for serving sub-standard food.

Overviewing the domain of these penalties, it seems that the Authority’ main targets are outdoor food-serving vendors. While the kind of edibles and even basic food stuff including vegetables, fruits, dairies, cereals, poultry, meat, etc. are in market hardly anybody satisfies from it. There is a serious need to have a check on their supply and production too, which the Food Authority doesn’t seem to cater. Second, the provincial authority should begin its functioning impartially and across the province even-handedly. But to target only Karachi even in experimental phase, questions the impartiality of the Sindh Food Authority.

The foremost irony is the Sindh Government neither developed its organizational structure nor has its own staff to manage and run functioning of the institution, yet it has only devised penalties and monetary fines which it will start to pocket from this week only in Karachi with the help of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation staff.

The Authority has not established offices and neither have concerned staff at District level. Nor have any Food laboratory at District level, a pre-requisite for Authority. Yet they are starting its operations from Karachi through KMC food inspectors because Karachi have always been a cash cow for all such means and greed.

Even if the Sindh Food Authority is going to begin operations from Karachi it should keep in mind the metropolitan has 6 districts. And, according to the Authority’ Act there must be a food lab in each district of the province, so before begin operations the Authority is required to first establish food labs in each district of Karachi, which is a vast and sizable megacity in terms of distance and population. Currently, Karachi has only a single food lab that too is under the control of KMC rather Sindh Food Authority.

The Authority’ by-laws permit food inspectors to collect registration and annual fees from a push cart or roadside vendor to a 5-Star hotel or lush eatery. It raises a serious question how they can keep a watch on a moveable seller who doesn’t have his own place. Secondly, these push carts and roadside vendors mostly do business occupying roadside encroachments, so after collecting Registration and Renewal fees from them does the Sindh Food Authority are going to regularize these encroachments?  

Therefore, an anti-encroachment drive is must before Authority begin its operations, otherwise we will see more hustle in already congested downtown of the city.

Lastly there is no room in the Authority’ set up for important relevant ministries like Environment, Local Government or Agriculture nor have representation from any Consumer and Civil Society. That insinuates an authoritarian and exploitative intention behind the law makers of this Authority.

Yet, there is no denying a Food Authority is the need of time not only in Karachi but also across the province. Wish all these shortcomings would be overcome soon.  

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Editorial, Infocus

Food Festival in Benazir Bhutto Park – An Overt Violation of Law

On May 19, 2017, the Infocus published a post on these pages pointing out at the holding of a commercial festival in Khulfa e Rashdeen Park at 13-D, Gulshan e Iqbal and stated that it was a violation of law by DMC East. While strong apprehensions were also raised in the post that “if this (violation) would (not) become a future trend”. That festival badly ruined the park infrastructure, greenery and serenity at the end of the day so badly that DMC East hasn’t yet recovered that all till this date.

However, above apprehensions seems to be turning into realities. Again, civic rules are being violated and an event of festivity “Karachi Eat Food Festival” is being arranged from January 12 to 14, 2017 in the city’ one of the most prestigious public place the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Park, located in Clifton, DMC South. Previous two editions of the event had also been arranged at Frere Hall alongside Bagh e Jinnah, which attracted massive crowd for fun and food activities, leading the festival to become an annual event. There is no doubt the festival is a popular and successful addition on the metropolitan recreational landscape but holding it in a public park have consequences too.

That’s the reason which has led many concerned bodies including the National Forum for Environment and Health (NFEH) to ask the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) not to allow a central public park to host any food festival. The Forum rightly opined in a press conference that holding such commercial event in pubic park violates the very basic purpose for which the urban open spaces are meant for. “The public parks are like essential public open spaces in a city like Karachi and in no way these spaces should be used to host a commercial activity, which has every potential to damage the very basic components and essentials of a park” it argues.

Parks are important for people, especially the urban communities, to stay fit and sane. Apart from offering recreational pleasure to the city’ dwellers, parks are places where people are kept in touch with nature. That’s the basic and foremost purpose of any park which is prioritized and upheld world over. Any act that disrupts this basic purpose should be discouraged therefore.     

Furthermore the Supreme Court of Pakistan already gave a ruling in 2010 against holding commercial activities in public parks and declared it violation of Article 26 of Constitution of Pakistan. The ruling stated that parks are purpose of providing facilities, charm and temptation to general public in good faith and must not be used for any commercial activity.

It is also important to mention that millions of rupees are spent each year for the maintenance of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Park -- built on 47 acres of land -- but after holding such commercial activities the very essence of park in terms of aesthetic and horticultural aspects will be severely deteriorated and all public spending for maintenance will go in vain. And, in current scenario this probable deterioration would be irreparable because city’ municipal authorities don’t have sufficient funds to repair and renovate the beauty and infrastructure of the park again.

Therefore, the NFEH has solid reason that the food festival has every potential to damage the very basic components and essentials of Park. However, it is also noteworthy that Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Park is no longer in the custody of KMC right now as in May 2017 on the directives of Sindh Local Government, the Karachi Development Authority took over the charge of the park.

Hope sanity prevails in governmental corridors.

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Editorial, Infocus

2017; A Civic Review of Karachi

For the 3rd consecutive year Karachi has been named among the top 10 worst cities of the world, that summarises the plight of socio-civics and environment of the city in 2017. The city needed special attention in terms of new administrative order, economic development, local policing, coherency among all civic bodies and environment management to save it from crisis-ridden turmoil but unfortunately all these issues remained absolutely unaddressed in this year.

The Economist Intelligence Unit – the research and analysis division of The Economist Group – in this year’ report has ranked Karachi at 134th in the list of 140 cities. The ranking was devised according to qualitative and quantitative factors where the city was found lagging behind in the categories of stability, healthcare, culture, environment, education and infrastructure.

Throughout the year Karachi remained in a state of civic inertia, as the City Mayor Waseem Akhtar as usually complained his inability to deliver citing lack of required financial and administrative powers while the Sindh Local Government remained busy more in spending the civic and metropolitan funds in latent structures and procurements rather initiating schemes to restructure Karachi as a planned megacity based on sustainable and systematic terms as well as smart developmental footings.     

Climate Change Impacts

The growing impacts of Climate Change also worsened the already fragile environs which ultimately added further miseries into the socio-civic fabric of the city. That is the reason when in April severe heat waves hit the southern Pakistan, Karachi recorded the highest temperature with a sizzling 41.5 degree centigrade. Because of uneven climate changing the city witnessed this year three spell of rainfall. The first in the mid of January which claimed 6 lives and with lowest temperature recorded at 10 Degree Centigrade. The monsoon rainfall flooded the entire city and all municipal and civic bodies including KMC and Cantonments were found incapable to cater that crisis-ridden situation, which claimed 23 lives in a week. Although, the KMC in order to avert this situation had earlier held extensive drive of cleaning storm water drains, specially Nehr Khayyam in March and widening of Gujjar Nallah by removing the alongside encroachments. Despite, it took weeks for KMC to dewatering it from the metropolis. The third spell of rain arrived in the mid of December which was very untimely and unexpected, however that day the city’ temperature fell to 10 degrees yet again.

Health Hazards

During the mid of the year serious Chikungunya virus broke out in Karachi -- especially in the Malir district-- which even compelled the World Health Organisation to send a medical team to control the horrors of outbreak. According to official figure around 4400 people affected by this virus in Sindh out of which more than 3700 resides only in Karachi. It was also disclosed in 2017, that last year the same outbreak claimed 405 lives in the province.

The fragilities of Karachi’ civic conditions further exposed when in a beach tragedy 12 people of a single family drowned at Hawks bay without getting any help from life guards on the spot. Also, 7 people died when a building collapsed in Liaquatabad. Irregular construction of the building can be blamed for these unwarranted deaths, however it is a fact that this irregularity in the shapes of flat-portions and bifurcation on smaller plots still is in regular practice, deliberately unchecked and even regularized by the KDA.        

Judiciary as Savior

However, the 2017 saw the superior judiciary with Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar and other apex courts to act as rescue and savior of the citizens, who has taken up cases of basic amenities particularly in health, water, sanitation and environment sectors. The apex courts constituted a judicial commission to make inspections of negligence in protecting fresh water sources, the environment and marine life. The commission exposed corrupt practices in all water and sanitation schemes besides severe pollution in water resources, absence of sewerage disposals and gross solid waste mismanagement.

Another worrying disclosure made in the court was 90% of water supplied in Karachi is unfit for human consumption due to contamination. It was revealed in a report prepared by Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources after analysis of 118 drinking water samples. In another hearing the apex court directed the Sindh government to work on effluent treatment plants and coordinate with the Federal government in controlling the marine pollution caused by dumping of 460 million gallons of toxic untreated industrial effluent and domestic waste each day in the Arabia sea. The Supreme Court also grilled the Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah and asked him to give a timeframe for the completion of public schemes relating to water and sanitation to the apex court.   

On November 30 the Supreme court in another case also ordered the KDA and KMC for removal of all sorts of encroachments from the amenity plots within a deadline of two months. The order was given when the KDA revealed in a report that 35,000 amenity plots were under encroachments in the city. The anti-encroachment drive is going on across the city.

In another judgement Supreme Court imposed a banned in an order on March 6 on issuance of approvals for high-rise and multi-storeys projects in the city. In compliance to the order the Sindh Building Control Authority issued a notification on May 26, imposing a complete ban on the construction of buildings beyond ground-plus-two-storeys in Karachi region forthwith.

Taking notice against encroachments, another bench headed by Justice Gulzar Ahmed took serious exception to the practice of renting out spaces in public parks and roads by the KMC authorities and in their judgment ordered to remove all encroachments and cabin shops from public parks and amenity plots across the city.

Wastes’ Politics

Despite all this judicial activism, traffic jam, garbage mismanagement and street crimes were rampant and top unresolved civic problems of the city in 2017. The 100-Day Cleanness Drive launched by the City Mayor ended miserably on March 10, 2017 without any success. On the other hand, amending the SLGO 2013 the Sindh Government transferred the responsibility of metropolitan’ solid waste from KMC to Sindh Solid Waste Management Board. The Board then outsourced this job to a Chinese firm Changyi Kangjie Sanitation Engineering Company Limited in the districts of Malir and South, besides importing hundreds of tricycle vehicles, handcarts, other machineries and thousands of garbage bins in the city. These colourful garbage bins can be seen in each district at sixes and sevens. However, these developments haven’t bore fruits and it is witnessed that rather clearing and transferring garbage to the landfill sites, it is dumped in drains, sea or burnt on the spot. In fact, solid waste was the key civic issue in 2017, which remained badly managed and unattended in many cases.  A petition is already in court regarding dissolution of Solid Waste Management Board by Mayor Karachi. 

Commutation Woes

Regular traffic jam has also kept the city environs extremely horrible, hectic and burdensome this year. Despite identifying damaged roads, encroachments, regular sewage fuss, absence of parking spaces, under-construction developments, heavy traffic movement in day time, peak hours rush, regular rise in vehicles and absence of Mass Transit Program as main causes of jamming, it seems the issue will remain unresolved. The Karachi Circular Railway, which had to be begun on Dec 25, as pledged by the CM, has been dumped again despite removing large chunk of encroachments on Circular Railway tracks.

Similarly, the Bus Rapid Transit System was also kicked off with Green Line in December, however it is still under construction and this lane has been extended further from Guru Mandir to Jama Cloth Market, as reported. Other segments of this Federal government project like Blue Line, Yellow Line, Red Line, etc are also either under construction or in pre-construction phase. Important projects of federal government like K-IV and S-III are still in development stages. Though, the M-9 -- Motorway between Karachi and Hyderabad -- was inaugurated by former Prime Minister in February but factually it is incomplete till this date, but motorway toll money has sizably been increased for travelling on M-9 which is still under-construction on BOT basis.   

The Sindh Government also carried out several development projects in the city under Local Government’ Karachi Package, though a number of these schemes were related to revamping, widening and renovating of major roads like Shahra e Faisal and University Road. However, opening of Underpasses like at Drigh Road, Nazimabad Chorangi and flyover at Korangi Crossing are important developments as far as commutation is concerned in Karachi.

Plight of Public Parks

The Jahangir Park was opened for public after renovation by Sindh Government in November. However, situation of other public parks in the city like Bagh e Jinnah, Burns Garden, Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Park, Beach Park and almost all community parks across the city are in state of badly deplorable conditions or encroached partially or completely. Controversy, however, raised over Bagh Ibn e Qasim, when in a notification on March 30 Sindh government handed the park’ maintenance over to a private party, which was resisted by the City Mayor and civil society. In the end the KMC won the battle and is working on its restoration and improvement -- though park is shut down for general public.

This tug of war between KMC and Sindh government over metropolis’ civic and municipal issues hasn’t ended yet, in fact it enters in 2018. Administrative heads of both institutions blame each other for ruination of city, which is heading towards unmanageable and unlivable with each passing day because of insincerity of authorities. And, that ruination is continued and still unattended. As an example, when some 5000 full trees were rooted out alongside Super Highway of Karachi region for the construction of M-9, neither the Chief Minister Sindh nor Mayor Karachi voiced against this disaster.       

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Editorial, Infocus