WHILE Karachi is the country’s largest city, it is also amongst the worst managed large urban spaces in Pakistan, often dumped at the bottom of liveability indices. Crime, pollution, crumbling infrastructure and the dearth of public transport are just some of the key problems afflicting Karachi. According to the city’s mayor Murtaza Wahab, at the root of the matter is the fact that multiple government agencies manage land in the metropolis. While speaking at an event on Tuesday, Mr Wahab said that the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation controlled only “27.4pc” of the megacity’s land, while adding that he had no “direct administrative relationship” with the city’s other land-controlling agencies. The mayor’s plaint is not without merit, though it must be said that KMC has failed to maintain the land that it does have control over.

It is true that there are multiple land-controlling bodies in Karachi. These include cantonments, as well as federal bodies such as the Karachi Port Trust and Railways. In this respect, where there are so many layers of bureaucracy involved, it is indeed a Herculean task to manage a city as geographically vast and densely populated as Karachi. Therefore, when new federal and provincial governments emerge next year, they should work with Karachi’s elected leadership to bring the city’s management under one body — the KMC. It makes no sense for multiple official bodies to lay claim to Karachi’s land. Numerous cantonment boards, for example, administer large tracts of land, even though there are few actual military facilities under their jurisdiction. Civilian areas should come under the administrative control of KMC, while purely military facilities can be managed by the armed forces. Other federal bodies also need to hand over control to the elected municipality. Yet if KMC were to better manage the areas currently under its control, it would make a stronger case for the return of all city areas to Karachi’s elected government.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2023