WE are all acutely aware that when the government of Sindh and its administration (or for that matter any government and administration of Pakistan) wishes to actually do something – naturally not for the good of the people but to achieve their own ends via their own means – they can do it, and do it rather effectively.

For instance, they can purposefully reduce the traffic-handling capacity of Sharea Faisal, a main artery of this city, to virtually zero. They did so this past May 12 when the gun-toting members of a local party with fascistic tendencies blocked it and its connecting feeder roads with water tankers, containers and whatever else came handy. They mounted gun-turrets on over-passes and pedestrian bridges and indulged in target practice. The Chief Justice of Pakistan and his legal entourage could not get out of Jinnah Airport and no one, welcoming rallies or individuals, could get on to Sharea Faisal to get anywhere. Even ambulances carrying the dead and wounded found it impossible to pass through the blockades – as would have been the case with fire engines.

Unless the City District Government, Karachi, (CDGK) develops some sort of will to do right by this city, and drastically reduces its obligations to London Town, the traffic handling capacities of most of the main roads may soon be reduced to just above zero. This need not happen if the roads are put to proper use, and if relevant laws, rules and regulations are stringently enforced.

This is a message that the citizens of Karachi have been trying, over the past year or so, to convey to young road-digger (gold-digger?) and City Nazim, Syed Mustafa Kamal. It has been suggested to him on numerous occasions that unless he takes concrete steps to enforce traffic discipline, to implement the driving rules, and to remove road friction (such as illegal parking, loading and unloading of vehicles, encroachments, thelas, khokas, jaywalkers), we are opting for disaster in not so distant a future. If he were to enforce all the laws that exist on the statute book, vehicles on roads such as Sharea Faisal would swing along like lightning. The traffic-handling capacity of all our thoroughfares, bad and reasonably good, would increase substantially.

What this government and administration do not wish to understand is the internationally acknowledged elementary principle of road planning (to repeat myself) : that new roads should only be built after all reasonable alternatives for minimising the use of single-occupancy vehicles, that is, cars, have been exhausted. The CDGK is blatantly disregarding this maxim in the rush to construct the lucrative Karachi Elevated Expressway (with its Malaysian connections) over Sharea Faisal, Club Road and M.T. Khan Road. They are ignoring the priority alternative of a proper, affordable public transport system.

Last year, the Karachi Mass Transit Cell (KMTC) of the CDGK, in collaboration with PCI International (Thailand) and Engineering Associates, published a report entitled ‘Private/Public Partnership-based Environmentally-friendly Public Transport System for Karachi.’ The introduction tells us that:

“The context of this study is the deteriorating situation of public transport in Karachi which includes, primarily, the bus system. The worsening situation and the stalled improvement schemes have led the Government of Pakistan [through the Planning and Development Division in collaboration with the Government of Sindh and the CDGK] to [institute] this study for the development of a bus development plan with a view to introduce approximately 8,000 new environmentally-friendly buses for Karachi. . . .

“Karachi has a history of transport planning projects that have never been implemented [for] a variety of factors; some financial and some political. The present problems at hand are so critical that the ‘do-nothing option’ is no longer an option.”

The KMTC report has emphasised that an all-Karachi policy-making Urban Transit Authority is needed “to coordinate all aspects of urban transit into a unified policy and budget framework to create a total ‘system-based’ passenger transport function.”

Governments and administrations of Pakistan are rather good at commissioning pricey studies and reports, but never have the political will, or perhaps the organisational ability, to implement any sound recommendations. Karachi’s transport system has been in a mess since the late 1970s. Previous inquiries into how to solve the problems include the 1982 Transport Commission Report, the 1983 Karachi Bus Owners' Association Report, the 1989 Karachi Development Authority Road Accident Costs Report, the 1990 KDA Mass Transit Study, the 1991 Draft Pakistan Transport Policy, the 1994 KDA Implementation Programme Report, and the 1999 SMEDA National Transport Strategy.

None of these papers have been acted upon; they just lie rotting in the archives. This is ridiculous. Enough studies have been made which, if even half implemented, would have gone a long way to see that we are not in the horrible mess in which we and our roads find ourselves today.

The population explosion pressure and the escalating transport problems all point to a mass transport system as the solution. Over the past decade, two half-hearted partial attempts were made by the city government to address this issue in collaboration with the private sector – the 1997 private NGO's Karachi Public Transport Society (KPTS) which included Swede CNG Bus and Metro Cab, and the 2002 CDGK's Urban Transport Scheme (UTS) which included Green CNG Bus and Airport Limousine. UTS eventually took over the KTPS survivors.The UTS operators blamed the increasing failure of the scheme on numerous factors: rising fuel costs, competition with non-UTS operators, illegal route operations, non-availability of depots and of promised subsidies, substandard spare parts and service, police harassment, absence of law and order, frequent VVIP (creatures that blight our lives) movement.

It is not difficult to see why the political heavyweights and the powers that run this city seem to be unable to muster the will to implement the recommendations of the KMTC Public Transport System plan, but have no qualms when it comes to the construction of mega-projects such as underpasses, overpasses and elevated expressways.

To move to other municipal matters: today Karachi is beset with power riots, with citizens experiencing up to twelve hours a day of breakdowns and load-shedding. How can any enterprise run properly when some 38 per cent of its product is stolen by consumers? The Karachi Electric Supply Corporation, with a turnover of Rs. 45 billion a year, has over one third of its generated energy illegally channeled through ‘kundas’ and tampered or bypassed meters – a haemorrhage that the newly-appointed CEO, Lt General Syed Mohammad Amjad, euphemistically termed “non-technical losses” (why?) at a recent public hearing. Imagine what relief could have been provided over the past decade had Rs.17 billion per year not been eaten away by thieves. But political patronage and corruption are the reasons that theft cannot be stopped, and so the paying customers suffer.

And then there is the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board which has also just had a change of guard at the top. After being run by technically-qualified serving brigadiers for the past many years, veteran non-technical civil servant Ghulam Arif (whose reputation precedes him) has taken over. With him have come two new non-technical Additional Vice-Chairmen, Imamuddin Shehzad and Moin Khan, both Karachi MQM MPAs. These people-friendly MPAs have spent large sums in refurbishing their offices and have two government cars each at their disposal. This largesse comes out of the budget of the bankrupt Board which supplies water worth Rs.12 billion annually but collects only two billion rupees in water and sewerage charges from residents, industries, commercial consumers, civil and military institutions, its annual expenditure of five billion rupees being subsidised by the taxpayers.

The ‘do-nothing option’ is indeed no longer an option – not only in the case of our roads and transport but in all issues pertaining to our lives in this city rated as the most polluted in the world. What we citizens, and our government and administrators, need to ask is: where does Karachi want to go? Down the proverbial drain?

But President General Pervez Musharraf has given orders that we should not spread depressing news. So, our aim must be to have in our province a non-corrupt non-fascistic government.

arfc@cyber.net.pk