Will not let public funds get misappropriated, don't want university road early completion, need to change sewage, water supply lines: Mayor KHI Waseem Akhtar
strategy for 4 billion rupees development plans, have special attention on Karachi, final touches on Malir Korangi road, beautification of Saddar downtown area: Mayor KHI Waseem Akhtar
Karachi - Karachi Deputy Mayor Dr Arshad Abdullah Vohra said on Sunday that KMC would like to take the private sector on board in order to benefit from its expertise in providing citizens better residential and commercial facilities.
“The cleaning of road from Sakhi Hassan to Manghopir will be done jointly with Naya Nazimabad project,” he said, and added, “If cities are planned in an organised manner, many issues generally confronting big cities can be avoided.”
He expressed these views during a visit to the Naya Nazimabad Project here on Sunday along with the Director General Technical Services Shahab Anwer, Senior Director Katchi Abadies & Anti Encroachments Nazeer Lakhani, Senior Director Municipal Services Masood Alam, Senior Director Health and Medical Services Dr Muhammad Ali Abbasi and other officers.
Arif Habib Group Chairman Arif Habeeb welcomed the Deputy Mayor, while Chief Executive of Naya Nazimabad Samad Habeeb and Director Muhammad Aijaz were also present on the occasion.
Vohra was given a detailed briefing on the project on this occasion.
He also inspected various parts of the project along with the project’s administrators.
Later, while inspecting the road from Manghopir to Sakhi Hassan and North Karachi, the deputy mayor said, “We want to plan such projects which could provide maximum facilities to residents of these areas.”
He expressed the hope that problems of Karachi would be solved speedily with the support and cooperation of private sector, especially those associated with the city projects and planning.
Talks underway with WB for various projects: Wasim
Meanwhile, Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar has said that talks are underway with the World Bank (WB) for various city projects, and soon new projects worth Rs4 billion will be launched in Karachi.
While talking to a WB delegation here on Sunday, he said, “A strategy has been chalked out to provide best facilities to the citizens.”
He added that funding for different city projects, including for the upgradation of roads in Malir, Korangi and Saddar, was being finalised which would broaden the base of uplift works in the city.
The mayor said that the citizens of Karachi were presently in great trouble due to negligence of the rulers for the last eight years.
Karachi Deputy Mayor Dr Arshad Abdullah Vohra, who was also present on the occasion, assured the delegation that elected leadership of Karachi was making all efforts for the betterment and progress of Karachi. “We want the World Bank to play its effective role in it,” he asserted.
This news was published in The Nation newspaper. Read complete newspaper of 13-Feb-2017
KARACHI: The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) has formed a three-member vigilant committee to check poor attendance and record of employees at its 24 departments and 38 allied administrative wings.
In this connection, Karachi Mayor Waseem Akhtar after seeking details finally approved names of two of his advisers Tariq Mir and Haider Imam Rizvi and senior director human resources Jamil Farooqui for the committee.
The committee would ensure punctuality and day-to-day working of the employees until installation of bio-metric system at all the offices of KMC, officials remarked.
The Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Municipal Commissioner have decided on the spot checking of employees' attendance on frequent visits to different departments, the officials revealed.
There are reports that majority of doctors and paramedics at the 13 KMC-run hospitals are not observing office timings.
KMC has the strength of 16,796 regular employees and after installation of bio-metric system salaries would also be streamlined.
The new system will bring betterment in efficiency and timely arrival of employees, providing relief to visitors and needy people, especially patients at KMC hospitals in the city.
Currently, we cannot take any official action against absentees, late comers and early departing employees. But, after bio-metric system no one would dare to indulge in scuffle with attendance staff.
Meanwhile, appointment of administrative officers at hospitals and health units is on the cards to run the affairs of attendance and progress in a smooth manner, the officials added.
Supervising these particular office matters by the medical superintendents and their deputies has not been working since they are a part of medical staff, they opined. The annual revenue of KMC hospitals is around Rs 89 million contrary to Rs 2.71 billion salaries besides annual non-development expenditures of Rs 67 million.
The deficit is met through subsidies from other financial resources. The total annual salary bill of KMC stands at around Rs 7.42 billion.
ISLAMABAD: Karachi and Lahore, the two largest cities of Pakistan, have privatised their garbage collection function.
In Lahore, two Turkish companies were awarded a seven-year contract valuing $320 million for solid waste collection, disposal and washing in 2012. After five years, the Sindh government followed suit by awarding an unknown Chinese company a $25 million contract for garbage collection in two districts of Karachi.
Garbage collection in Karachi reeks of dirty politics
On the surface, the two transactions seem similar, with the exception of contract period, certain functions and obviously the time lag between the two contracts. However, there is another caveat in the legal structuring of awarding agencies of the two cities.
In Lahore, the contract was awarded by the Lahore Solid Waste Management Company (LSWMC), an organisation established under the city government. Whereas on behalf of Karachi, the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) signed the garbage collection contract with the Chinese company.
SSWMB is established under the Sindh Assembly Act, whereby it is responsible for solid waste management of urban centres spread over an area of 140,914 square kilometres with a population of 55 million.
In comparison, the mandate of LSWMC is restricted to the Lahore city, which has a population of 10 million over an area of 1,772 square kilometres.
Different models
Naturally, a question arises about the intent of the two different governance models for solid waste management in two major cities of the same country. The answer lies in varying modes of sustaining political hegemony and economic rent-seeking by the political leadership.
Karachi’s garbage: Chinese firms to clean three districts
Punjab is not the paragon of devolution of power to lower echelons of the governance structure. The provincial government has effectively clipped the wings of local governments by retaining its control over service delivery at the grassroots level through bureaucracy.
However, credit is due to the provincial government on its structuring of governance of solid waste management in Lahore. It did appoint political leaders from Lahore on the board of LSWMC. Now the mayor of Lahore is directly engaged in supervising the efforts of LSWMC in keeping the city clean.
Indeed, this should be the model for replication in other cities of Pakistan, with some reforms on the fiscal policy framework.
Unique case
Against this precedent, the Sindh government is offering a unique model, whereby it is centralising a function like waste collection at the provincial level.
The irony becomes all that obvious when one sees the key role of PPP in passing the historic 18th Amendment, which revived the true federation spirit in Pakistan.
PPP has now adopted strong centralising tendencies at the provincial level, whereas it struggled against similar propensities at the federal level. These paradoxical predispositions are extracting political and economic costs from the vibrant province of Sindh.
The area of solid waste management becomes a classic example of this myopic mind-set. Privatisation of garbage collection is increasingly a popular mode being adopted by many metropolitan cities around the world.
However, in all these cities, this privatisation is managed by the city governments. It creates an onus on city governments to ensure quality service from private contractors, otherwise, they can face an axe in the next elections.
Now, in case, the political leadership is deriving its electoral strength from other locations, then its behaviour will be more of an extractive mode. We are witnessing the same in the case of Karachi.
Privatisation of municipal services requires continuous post-contract monitoring from local governments. Their responsibilities do not go up in thin air with the outsourcing of these services.
Their engagement can range from regulatory oversight to fee and billing service and contract development and maintenance.
If one talks in theory, then services provided by the local governments are those that cannot be economically provided by the market. In actual, local governments are providing these services in direct competition to the private sector.
The cost of the public sector delivery will be higher, if full cost accounting is taken into consideration.
Privatisation remains a government tool that can induce fiscal responsibility, while ensuring quality service to the public. Likewise, it may also be suggested that city governments should be involved in regulatory oversight of local utilities like power, gas and telecommunication.
In this manner, chances of regulatory capture by multibillion rupees worth of utilities may be reduced. Democracy is not the name of holding periodic elections and then forgetting about the performance till the next elections.
Five years remain a large period to make life hell or heaven for the citizens. Participatory democracy is the call of the period and it also works well for the inclusive market economy. Just need to see that whether anyone in Sindh government is lending its ears to this call.
The writer is a director in Policy Research Institute of Market Economy and can be reached at [email protected]
Published in The Express Tribune, February 13th, 2017.
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Mayor Karachi Waseem Akhtar visits JI Karachi office
Jasarat .org
Published on Dec 1, 2016
MQM's Mayor visits Idara Noor-e-Haq, meets JI Karachi chief Hafiz Naeem-ur-Rehman
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KARACHI: District Municipal Corporation (DMC) Korangi Chairman Nayyar Raza has directed the officials concerned to strictly comply with the system developed for garbage removal and disposal work in the district.
Chairing a meeting here on Tuesday, he urged them to also expedite the process of safe disposal of varied categories of waste generated at different union councils located in the area. Warning that no negligence will be tolerated, Raza said an efficient surveillance system is also in place and strict action will be taken against staffers failing to realise their responsibilities.
All thoroughfares, lanes, surroundings of all the educational institutions, religious buildings and commercial centres must be diligently cleaned on daily basis, emphasised the DMC – Korangi chairman.
Meanwhile, during a visit to Shah Faisal zone off DMC – Korangi, Nayyar Raza accompanied by the chairmen of union committees, inspected the cleanliness and collection along with the transportation of garbage from designated points to main dumping site.
He urged the concerned official to pay equal attention towards plantation and protection of greenery in their respective areas of jurisdiction.
Raza also assured people, who had gathered there and shared their problems with him, that all genuine grievances would be addressed without any delay.
February 15, 2017
Karachi Mayor Waseem Akhtar has warned the departmental heads of Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) to ensure punctuality at the workplace, warning that employees unable to follow the code would be removed from their respective posts.
While chairing a meeting on Tuesday, he addressed the medical and health department, he said that their performance was unsatisfactory hence the staff needs to be punctual or be ready for a stern action. He added that officials can hold monthly meetings with him while the recovery departments would have to submit performance report every week.
The mayor gave various directives to the officials and stressed that all files should be routed through a proper channel like a DAK procedure and commission through contracts should be halted immediately. Akhtar also mentioned that KMC now had a new section R&I (Received & Issued) and all files would be sent and processed through this channel.
Cleanliness drive
Deputy Mayor Karachi Dr Arshad Vohra visited Liaquatabad to review ongoing cleanliness drive in UC40 of district central, Liaquatabad No 10, S M Taufiq Road and Teen Hatti and gave instructions to officials for its early completion.
Vohra was told that 65 percent of the work had been completed in UC 40 while garbage from S M Taufiq Road and Teen Hatti would be cleared , followed by plantation of saplings to restore greenery in the area.
II Chundrigar Rd to have pedestrian bridges soon: deputy mayorKARACHI: Karachi Deputy Mayor Arshad Vohra has assured early installation of the pedestrian bridges on II Chundrigar so as to facilitate the citizens.Responding to submissions forwarded to him by concerned citizens led by activist Saghir Ali Siddiqui, on Wednesday, the deputy mayor acknowledged that there was an urgent need for the pedestrian bridges at the Jang Press and National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) head-office sites on II Chundrigar Road.In his directives issued to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation Municipal Services senior director, he also asked for the similar facilities near Mazare Quaid.Vohra said that the safety of public life and the provision of essential facilities was the core responsibility of the city government.
Deputy Mayor of Karachi, Dr Arshad Vohra has directed Municipal Services Directorate of Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) to work out the feasibility of constructing over-head bridges at different points of I.I.Chundrigar road to facilitate pedestrians. Such instructions were issued by the Deputy Mayor to KMCs Senior Director, Services through a letter dated February 13, 2017, on the request from a social organisation Khadmin-e-Millat Pakistan (KMP), said a statement. Secretary General KMP, Saghir Ahmed Siddiqui had sent written request to the Deputy Mayors office that a large number of pedestrians would be relieved of trouble of crossing I.I. Chundrigar road mainly during rush hours by constructing overhead bridges at Jang Press Building and National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) Building. It is mentioned that there were many private and government offices including Headquarters of Banks along I.I. Chundrigar Road from Shaheen Complex to Mereweather Tower.
