ABOUT 90pc of Karachi’s population uses water supplied by the sole public water service provider, the Karachi Water & Sewerage Board (KWSB).

The KWSB is presently struggling to survive as a financially viable water utility, capable of delivering quality services on a sustained basis. Understanding the relevant political economy context of Karachi is critical for rationalising a viable framework for water services reform.

Two critical factors merit consideration: firstly, a failure of sector entities collectively for promoting viable urban growth and secondly, a weakening capacity and mandate of civic entities in land development and service provision.

Karachi’s phenomenal expansion has been a vital contributor to straining the service delivery reach and capacity of civic agencies. The city is divided into ‘planned’ and ‘unplanned’ areas. Unplanned areas are mostly in the form of katchi abadis (urban squatter settlements). Most of Karachi’s recent peripheral land development has been in the shape of illegal sub-divisions — katchi abadis developed by land grabbers.

The vacuum in formal land development and service provision has been filled through a proliferation of informal sector responses. Public-sector service providers extend services based on establishment of legal tenure. However, informal service provision does not discriminate on the basis of legal status. Hence, an increasing number of new settlers are accessing basic urban services by engaging with the informal sector.

Important sectors of the urban economy are now functioning under informal jurisdictions, with their own systems of arbitration and enforcement. Consequently, public service delivery agencies such as the KWSB are increasingly losing their mandate and relevance with resulting loss in revenue.

Then there are institutional constraints. Under the KWSB Act 1996, the KWSB was separated from the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation. While the KWSB is supposed to be an autonomous body, in actual practice it enjoys little autonomy and essentially operates as an executing agency with key functions including approval of budgets, regulations and tariff, hiring and postings and provision/facilitation of locally mobilised funds or foreign loans or grants vested within the purview of the provincial government.

Furthermore, the federal government stands as guarantor for water allocation and distribution, underwriting of loans and technical assistance and also for conflict resolution whenever appropriate.

The city government has failed to exercise sufficient policy and legislative control. For this, there is for one the issue of jurisdiction. The major water supply source for Karachi is the Indus, with water accessed from the Kotri Barrage (located about 150km from Karachi) with associated provincial and federal controls. Added to this there is, according to some, constitutional ambiguity regarding the status of the third tier of government.

Till now, efforts at reform have been characterised by the debate on where the KWSB should reside — with the province or the city. While in an appropriate governance framework the city is better placed to host an urban water utility, this may not, for the time being, be a feasible option here.

This is so firstly owing to provincial and federal overlaps in the technical and legislative realms discussed earlier and secondly due to urban land use and ownership patterns. In Karachi, initially the federal capital of Pakistan, huge parcels of land are owned by federal and provincial entities while the city also hosts the nation’s largest industrial base. The city exercises little control over these land establishments that supersede its jurisdiction.

A possible road map for reform should begin with putting in place a viable institutional framework for the utility, in the absence of which large-scale investments in infrastructure development are likely to deliver limited dividends in terms of improved efficiency in performance.

Strategically, a parallel process of investment in infrastructure linked with institutional reforms can also be worked out for which precedents exist. A likely starting point could be the recommendations coming out of the master plan, recently prepared by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, that stands approved by the KWSB.

As envisaged in the plan, an effort needs to be made to engage the decision-makers in evaluating options for creating the enabling legislative space for corporatising, not privatising the KWSB in a phased manner with the requisite regulatory safeguards. Embedded in the process, an accommodating space for alternative service providers should be structured that enables strategic utility linkages with the larger urban water sector.

Creating a space for viable funding support is a vitally important consideration. The recommendation made recently by the Asian Development Bank for setting up a Special Financing Vehicle (SFV) is relevant. A successful experiment has already been carried out in Punjab with the setting up of the Punjab Municipal Development Fund.

This body has facilitated performance-based funding and transparent use of funds free from political manipulation through enforcement of strict financial controls. An SFV arrangement has the potential of vesting the much-needed financial autonomy with the KWSB, enabling it to borrow for well-regulated investments to become creditworthy.

As stated earlier, most of the marginalised communities are progressively falling beyond the utility’s scope. The new paradigm in service provision should create institutional and legislative space for alternative modes in service provision that places the KWSB not in the role of a ‘provider’ of services to all but as an entity that ensures that all are ‘provided for’.

This requires a new vision translated in a reform-based governance framework for the larger water sector in Karachi. A new vision for water-sector reforms is an urgent necessity to ensure efficiency and sustainability for the wider urban governance and development construct in Karachi.

The writer is an urban planner.