HEALTH authorities in the past took extra care of Karachi’s ecosystem. On Sept 30, 1974, for example, it was reported that the first and the most important phase of the Karachi Municipal Corporation’s (KMC) anti-mosquito campaign had ended. The campaign, launched on April 3, coincided with the end of the mosquito breeding season. In the last five and a half months, the KMC de-silted 77 miles of nullahs and channelised nearly 85 miles of major drains apart from using 66,000 gallons of insecticide to oil and spray 3,200 acres of the worst affected marshy lands, pools of water, depressions, riverbeds and other mosquito breeding grounds in the city.

On Oct 1, another story in a somewhat similar context appeared in this newspaper. About 2703 pye-dogs were killed in New Karachi and its adjoining areas by the KMC in a week-long anti-pye-dog drive that had finished on Sept 29. During the exercise, the KMC staff placed 3,025 baits in the locality.

But, arguably, a bigger crisis was rearing its head that hogged the headlines for a few days to come. On Oct 2, it was claimed that more than 50000 lbs of shrimp had been spoiled during the last four days and about 150000 lbs faced the same fate because of the raging controversy between the freezing plant owners and fishermen on the question of deveining shrimp and their prices. At a marathon meeting on Oct 1, called by the Karachi administration, the plant owners insisted that the fishermen should take off the shrimps’ heads on the high seas and offered Rs11.25 per lb for large shrimp (jaira) and Rs5.15 per lb for medium prawn (kalri) as against the current rates of Rs7 for the former and Rs3 for the latter. The fishermen trawler owners and the mole-holders (middlemen) opposed the proposal arguing that it would not get them a fair price from the owners. The Karachi Fishermen Society, meanwhile, notified all mole-holders that on Eid holidays (it was the holy month of Ramazan) the society wouldn’t take the responsibility for auctioning shrimp hauls if their heads were not pulled off on the high seas.

The next day, the Karachi administration directed the freezing plant owners to buy all the accumulated stocks of shrimp and lift the daily fresh hauls at the current rates — Rs7 and Rs3 for jaira and kalri. It also asked them to compensate the fishermen for the 50,000 lbs that had gone waste due to their refusing to lift the daily catch in the past five days.

Going by the above-mentioned issues, one would have thought that things weren’t going well in the Sindh capital. Not so. On Oct 5, Chief Minister of Sindh Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi expressed satisfaction at the pace of progress of various ongoing projects undertaken by the Karachi Development Authority (KDA) and the Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC), especially the Metroville Pilot Project in the Sindh Industrial Trading Estate. After visiting six of the KDA’s and five of the KMC’s projects he told newsmen that he was satisfied with them. With reference to Metroville (which envisaged 8,000 housing units for rehabilitation of more than 50,000 people) he said it was an experiment in which basic facilities would be provided by the government and the allottees were to complete construction work according to their means and requirements.

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2024