KARACHI: In the presence of a dysfunctional governance construct, local government is fast losing its relevance, said urban planner Farhan Anwar at a seminar organised by Shehri at a hotel on Saturday.

The seminar focused on defining a good local governance agenda for the city in the light of recent appointments of mayor and deputy mayor along with councillors.

Mr Anwar, also a Shehri member, began his presentation by saying that urban planning was the mandate and jurisdiction of the local government but it suffered from a dysfunctional governance construct. “For instance,” he said, “the local powers are exercised by the provincial government and the powers that should be with the provincial administration is controlled by the federal government; leading to a chaos specifically in Karachi.”

Explaining the reason for the chaos, he said garbage disposal, water and sewerage, city’s development and building control, which should be looked over by the local administration, was under the Sindh government through the Revival and Amendment of Bill, 2016.

Similarly, he said, an informal economy running parallel to the formal sector remained undocumented and unregulated. In this process, viable urban growth became a casualty getting straitjacketed between turf battles. In such a scenario, the thriving private sector could be helpful in sorting some of the issues being faced in the city at present, he added.

Another Shehri member, Sameer Hamid Dodhy, said the passage of some “damaging laws” over the past many years gave rise to commercialisation of amenity plots.

Sharing a few instances, he said the city district council under the chairmanship of Karachi nazim Niamatullah Khan of Jamaat-i-Islami, approved the Change of Land Use and Master Planning By-Laws-2003.

He said: “This change enabled arbitrary ‘ribbon commercialisation’ of roads leading to huge problems for area residents.

“The MQM-led local government of former mayor Syed Mustafa Kamal accelerated this process of commercialisation. Currently, the PPP-appointed district administration has the power to declare any plot commercial.”

The reason was to make money, said Mr Dodhy, adding that the commercialised area with 10 houses got converted into 10-storey residential-cum-commercial buildings, multiplying the number of households within the same space.

He said the province had more funds since the money transfers improved after the 7th NFC Award. Quoting a recent news article from Dawn, he said every year projects appeared on paper, as the funds released were siphoned off into private bank accounts. He said these were facts supported by evidence.

He came up with a list of alternative ways to improve governance issues which, he said, could be considered by the current leadership of the local government by upholding the law and standard operating procedures. To ensure that councillors were accepted by citizens, he called for access to information, greater transparency, especially in funds transfer, having effective complaint portals, and legislation to ensure citizens’ input in all small or mega projects.

Published in Dawn September 4th, 2016